


Hunter's Moon

by elementalv



Series: The Key's Watcher [3]
Category: Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-08-25
Updated: 2009-11-18
Packaged: 2017-10-03 07:32:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elementalv/pseuds/elementalv
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A new universe, a new city, a new store. Giles' life takes a turn toward the weird.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Journal of Rupert Giles_

_September 27, 2004_

_Ms. Pearce stopped by this morning to discuss the case against Abigail. Fortunately, Ms. Blake allowed Nathaniel to come in for his shift, so we were able to speak in the back with very few interruptions._

_After all that she’s done, it seems that Abigail still isn’t finished with me. Her latest ploy was to claim that she was carrying my child. Ms. Pearce was kind enough not to say anything until they determined whether or not she is, in fact, pregnant. She isn’t, but it raises the question of whether or not to add rape to the list of charges._

_Ms. Pearce told me that in an interview with her lawyer present, Abigail stated unequivocally that she’d used a combination of magic and potions to make me susceptible to suggestion and to erase my memory of the event. I don’t know whether to be angry or relieved that I can’t remember it, but I do know I feel unclean again._

_I think I’ll get in touch with Charlotte Jackson tomorrow. She and the others of her coven were most helpful in releasing me from the last of Abigail’s spells, including two I hadn’t located on my own. They may know of a way to restore my memory. I’m not sure why I want to recapture it, but I feel the need to verify what she told Ms. Pearce. As unstable as she’s turning out to be, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if she were lying._

_Perhaps meditation will help me to find peace and to determine whether or not to press charges. I wish I could say I have no problem with the notion, but I was raised in an era in which the rape of a man by a woman was regarded as well nigh impossible. It’s disturbing to find that my disinclination to press charges is informed by those early and erroneous attitudes._

*****

October 22, 2004

Abigail’s trial ended a week and a half ago with the expected verdict of guilty on all counts of assault by use of magic, rape by use of magic and attempted murder by use of magic. She was also convicted of poisoning me following her use of potions in the food she’d given me at the shop and those which she’d given me after abducting me.

I’d been depressed since hearing the verdict, because all counts carried a mandatory death sentence. She’s scheduled to be executed in three weeks’ time, and I haven’t quite been able to bring myself to believe it is the appropriate social response to her actions.

I’d remained disconsolate until today, when I had a conversation with Nathaniel about increasing his hours. He was turning out to be a natural in the field of retail, and on top of that, he was drawing new customers. The members of his fan club — all of whom spend money whenever any of them arrive — were the reason I asked him earlier if he would be interested in working full-time. He was so transparently excited that it was enough to at last lift my own mood.

At four o’clock, I left him to close the store on his own so I could go and get the ingredients for a dinner to celebrate my return to feeling a bit closer to normal. By the time I returned from Straithern’s, my mood had lifted somewhat further, and I was even starting to look forward to the Chamber of Commerce’s Hunter’s Ball the next evening. Standing at the stove two hours later, I was lost in the haze of a contented mood when I heard the door slam open.

“Dad!”

“Dawn!” I’m fairly certain I matched her inflection perfectly.

“Now is not the time for mockery,” she said, coming into the kitchen and setting her backpack on the floor next to the table.

“If not now, when? If not I, who?” I said. I was making yet another attempt to master jambalaya, and I scooped up a bit for Dawn to taste. She took a cautious sniff, then blew on it a bit before accepting the sample.

“Well?”

“Getting there. But don’t distract me.” She leaned against the counter next to the stove and said, “You have to talk to Buffy and get her to straighten out.”

“Oh yes, because that always worked so well when she was alive. What’s missing?” I frowned as I did a mental run-through of the ingredients I’d used.

“It needs more salt.” She snagged a piece of green pepper that hadn’t made it in and, unfortunately, she returned to her original topic. “I mean it. You have to talk to her. She’s out of control.”

“I hardly think that’s the case,” I said. I added salt with all the care a munitions expert took when building an explosive device. Too much would ruin it. Too little would earn me Dawn’s blah face. “She’s just a bit giddy is all. She hasn’t any obligation to save the world these days, and she’s enjoying her freedom.”

“She told me this afternoon she was going to start haunting the Cardinals’ locker room,” Dawn said flatly.

I looked up at her, a bit puzzled, because I could have sworn — “The regular season is over, isn’t it?” I wasn’t a complete baseball fan, but I was starting to enjoy the game a bit — enough, at any rate, to have a reasonable estimation of when the games were played.

“Yuh-huh, but that is _so_ not the point. The point is she’s turning into a peeping Buffy. And when I told her baseball season was over, she decided to haunt the Rams’ locker room instead.” Dawn snatched another piece of pepper and added, “I’m serious. You need to have a chat with your Chosen One about the way she’s behaving.”

“And again, I say, ‘Oh yes, because that always worked so well when she was alive.’” When her glare intensified, I took a deep breath and said, “Fine. I’ll have a chat with her, but I doubt it will do any good. She’s a ghost, she knows she’s a ghost, and she’s determined to behave like a ghost.”

“And you’re going to maintain that attitude if I tell you she’s been checking you out in the shower, right?” Her voice and face were quite innocent, but her question was formed from the purest evil.

The spoon flew out of my hand, hitting the wall before dropping to the floor. I bit back one of my more colorful phrases as I picked it up. When I faced Dawn again, I said, “She isn’t!”

She just lifted her eyebrows then went to pick up her backpack. As she left the kitchen, she said in a quasi-soothing tone of voice, “If you want to believe that, you go right ahead.”

Bloody hell.

I’d known Buffy was getting a bit wild, but I didn’t think she’d go so far as to — and there was no way to confirm or deny Dawn’s allegation, because she hadn’t actually made an allegation. All she’d done was ask the one rhetorical question guaranteed to make me completely paranoid.

First things first. I turned down the heat on the jambalaya then went down to the shop to pick out a few things to ward the bathroom against ghostly visitors. And since Dawn was the one who decided to try to make my nightmares come to life, she could drop whatever it was she planned to do and help me. I went back upstairs, stomping a bit to express my displeasure. The jambalaya would be fine at a simmer, but I doubted my nerves would be.

“Dawn!” It wasn’t a shout. It was a bellow. And it had the desired effect. She shot out of her bedroom and barely managed to stop herself just outside the bathroom.

“What? Where’s the demon?” She looked around, somewhat panicked.

I glared at her and said, “Standing right in front of me. Go get the matches and candles. We have a ward to put up.”

The look of outrage on her face was reward enough for me. And fifteen minutes later, I was as certain as I could be that the late Buffy Summers, late of Sunnydale, California, would _not_ be able to enter the bathroom without an express invitation. Unfortunately, my certainty was tempered by the knowledge that wards against ghosts were notoriously unreliable. I could only hope that the addition of a strand of Dawn’s hair would make the ward effective against Buffy.

By the time we sat down to eat, I was reasonably calm once more and said, “I’ll talk to Buffy, but as I said, it’s unlikely I’ll have any effect.”

“Just try. It’s bad enough that she’s a ghost. She doesn’t need to be a pervert on top of it,” she said, just before taking a bite of the jambalya. “I think you got it right this time.”

“Did I?” I took my own taste and found I agreed with her. The tastes and textures all worked together the way they were supposed to. “You do realize, don’t you, that in the normal course of events, you would have no idea what Buffy was doing as a ghost?”

“Says the man who just spent — how long? — building a ward that probably won’t even work,” she answered darkly.

“That’s different,” I said. It was a weak response, because she had a point. I hated it when she held a mirror up to show me that I was in the wrong.

“Believe me, I’d be way happier being clueless about her activities than I am with her popping in every so often to tell me what she’s been up to,” she said with a frown and the outrage only an eighteen-year-old can muster.

I hadn’t expected to laugh, but really, it was just too humorous. She scowled at me and said, “What?”

“I was just thinking that a parent’s best revenge is grandchildren who turn their children’s hair gray. Only in your case, it’s a sister who’s behaving as badly as you once did,” I told her. I tried to take another bite, but I was starting to giggle too hard. It really was the perfect revenge, and I didn’t even have to wait for grandchildren.

“Laugh it up, funny guy. I’m sure you can find someone else to take tomorrow night,” she said. Threatened, actually.

“You wouldn’t — Dawn, you promised you’d go with me,” I said with a tinge of panic in my voice. I’d gone with Michelle last year, and we’d had an enjoyable evening of it. This year, following Abigail’s trial, I simply wasn’t up to facing my fellow business owners without someone at my side to help deflect the inevitable questions.

She stared at me for a long moment, then said, “Alright, I’m bluffing. I’ll go. But no more jokes about Buffy’s criminal tendencies.”

“If she were alive, it would be a problem,” I said. “As she isn’t, there isn’t much either of us can do other than attempt to appeal to her better nature.”

“I know. I get it,” she said staring down into her plate. She seemed far more upset than the situation warranted, and I wondered if perhaps something else might be going on.

“Dawn?”

“Hm?” She hadn’t looked up. Not a good sign.

“If you’d rather not go with me tomorrow night, you don’t have to. I’ll understand if you and Brian might have something else you’d rather do,” I said somewhat hesitantly. I hoped with all my heart that wasn’t the issue — I most decidedly did not want to go to the Hunter’s Ball on my own. But if Dawn had other things she might prefer to do, I wasn’t going to hold her to this particular commitment.

She mumbled something, and I asked her to repeat herself. She looked up and said, “Brian and I broke up.”

“What? When?” She certainly wasn’t acting the way she had when she’d broken off with other boys. She seemed almost embarrassed.

“Last Thursday,” she answered, looking guilty.

She had every reason to look guilty. She knew full well how hurt I would be that she hadn’t told me immediately. It wasn’t that I expected to know every single detail of her life, but I _had_ come to expect to hear about the major events. Breaking off a relationship, even one that was relatively new, definitely fell into that category. Still, she must have had what she thought was a good reason for not saying anything. I took a deep breath and tried not to sound terribly pathetic when I asked, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

She rolled her eyes, but I had the impression she was rolling them at herself, not me. “Because I felt like a complete idiot — and you want to hear the whole story, don’t you?”

“Only if you —” I couldn’t choke out the lie. “Actually, yes, I want to hear the whole story.”

“I’ll tell you, but you have to swear on your honor that you won’t hex him or call up a vengeance demon to do it for you,” she said, staring me straight in the eye to let me know she was serious.

“I have no idea how to call up a vengeance demon, and even if I did, it would be useless, because I would want to handle it on my own,” I said. I was already building up a good head of anger, given the fact that she’d felt the need to extract such a promise from me.

“Promise,” she said. She wasn’t allowing me to distract her, which wasn’t a good sign.

I sighed to make sure she knew I felt greatly put upon, then scowled as I said, “I promise. Now what happened?”

“This is so stupid,” she said, looking down again.

“Did he _do_ —”

“No! Nothing like that. Chill, Dad. It’s just — he had me fooled. He had both of us fooled, I guess.” She was playing with her food, and I could see a faint blush rising on her cheeks.

“How do you mean, fooled?” I was getting more than a little concerned by now. Dawn had far too much confidence in herself to be stalling to this extent. The fact that she was evading the issue meant that Brian had somehow shaken that confidence, and I wanted very much to shake him. Unfortunately, she had already made me promise to do nothing to him.

“He tried to get me to go to that big tent revival tomorrow,” she said as her blush deepened.

“A tent revival? Perhaps for a class project?” Foolish of me to hope there was a reasonable explanation, I know, but I was confused, and Dawn was being miserly with the details.

“No,” she said on a deep sigh. “Not for school. For me. He wanted me to be ‘saved’.”

That made me blink. In fact, I blinked several times before saying, “But he knows we’re Wiccan. We talked about it at dinner, and he said he had no problem dating outside his faith.” I felt a bit stupid saying it, but I was having a hard time understanding how he could have imagined that Dawn would agree to going to a revival for any reason other than academic.

“He lied. He lied about it not being a problem, and he lied about why he wanted to date me,” she said. Lord, but she sounded so sad and disgusted I was ready to break my word and go after him that moment. “He told me he wanted to save my soul — that it was part of some project his youth minister dreamed up.”

“And to do that, he _lied_,” I said in an effort to ensure that I heard her correctly.

“Yeah. Apparently, it’s okay to lie if you’re trying to save someone from eternal damnation. At least, that’s what his youth minister told him.” I had promised to do nothing to Brian, but perhaps the youth minister might get a visit.

“And he thought you would actually —” I broke off when tears welling up in her eyes. I stood, then tugged on her arm until she, too, was standing. I pulled her in close, and with that, she was finally able to let loose a storm of weeping.


	2. Chapter 2

_Journal of Rupert Giles_

_December 4, 2002_

_Dawn and I finally had it out tonight. We’ve been snapping at each other for the last few weeks over minor irritations, and it was getting to the both of us. I haven’t seen her have a full-on temper tantrum since the night she cut herself at Buffy’s birthday party, and frankly, she was due for one. _

_We’re in a difficult situation here. No matter what we do to ensure we blend in, we’ll always be outsiders, and we’ll always be in a certain amount of danger from the government. I have no doubt this world sports its own version of the Initiative, and I don’t plan to allow such a group to capture either of us for study. With that imperative in mind, it’s difficult, if not impossible to sustain relationships with others, especially since they’re all built on lies. _

_Dawn’s friend Max thinks her mother and sister died in an earthquake two years ago, and that’s as it should be. Tonight’s blow-up was over Dawn’s desire to tell her the truth of the matter. _

_I don’t blame her. The desire to share my own life story with someone new is overwhelming at times, no more so when I’m alone with my own thoughts. But it’s too dangerous, a fact of which I reminded her yet again tonight._

*****

October 23, 2004

Dawn’s mood was still mildly blue when she awoke this morning. She worked in the store until noon, which is when I finally handed her my credit card and told her to buy the prettiest dress she could find for tonight’s dance. After a brief pause to confirm that accessories and a trip to the hair salon were included in my instructions, she all but left scorch marks on the floor as she raced out of the shop.

My time with Buffy and Dawn had taught me that if ice cream failed to lift a young woman’s spirits, an unexpected shopping trip would almost certainly do the trick. My inner Ethan spoke up to ask if there was any reason to believe Dawn hadn’t perhaps been milking the situation for all it was worth. I tried to ignore that small whisper, but truthfully, there wasn’t any reason to discount the possibility. Even so, I felt badly that I, too, had been taken in by Brian, and I wanted to make it up to her.

The situation was hard for me to accept. She had dated self-professed Christians before, and it hadn’t been a problem. Neither David nor Robert had pressured Dawn into accepting their beliefs as her own. The break-ups had more to do with a lack of deep feeling than anything else, and, in fact, she was still friends with both young men. Brian had done nothing to indicate that he was different from the others, which was why we accepted him so readily. That there was no sign he was dissimilar should have comforted us both once the truth emerged.

It didn’t, though, and I thought the reason might be that his lies came hard on the heels of Abigail’s betrayal. Both Dawn and I were still reeling from discovering the true depth of her perfidy, and our confidence in our judgement had taken a severe blow as a result. Brian’s behavior just reinforced the notion that we might not be as good at judging character as we’d thought we were.

I could feel the gloom trying to settle in again, so I did what I could to distract myself between customers and started an inventory of our magic supplies. It was a make-work project, as Nathaniel had just completed that particular task two days earlier. Still, it kept me occupied until four o’clock, when Dawn called down from the apartment.

“Hey, I’m back. I’m leaving the receipts on the kitchen table,” she said.

“You could have dropped them off down here, so I could see what you bought,” I answered. Blast. I miscounted the eight-inch white candles.

“No, I don’t want you to have your heart attack until after you close the store. People get weird when they see an ambulance in front of a business,” she said. Her comment was enough to get me to focus on the conversation and not the number of candles.

“I beg your pardon?” I didn’t have to make any effort to sound faint — I was quite ready to pass out as I started to have nightmare visions of the credit card bill that would come in next month.

“I saw the bundles of cash still sitting in the safe, so don’t even pretend we don’t have enough money to cover today’s little shopping spree,” she said.

I snapped out, “Yes, well, I thought it would be nice to use it to pay your tuition next semester, not support half the clothiers in St. Louis.”

“Chill, Dad. It’s not that bad, and the stuff I got will make you the envy of your peer group.” She sounded amused, at least, so perhaps the fiscal shock would be worth it. She asked, “What time are we leaving?”

“Cocktail hour starts at half past six. I thought we would leave here around then. It will give us sufficient time to get there before dinner starts,” I answered.

“Cripes! That soon? Gotta go,” she said, hanging up before I had a chance to respond. It was a mystery to me as to how it could take a woman two and a half hours to get ready to go out for the evening. Had we lived in an earlier time, I might have understood it, given the number of undergarments a lady once had to don before finally putting on her gown. And once she had her evening clothes on, even more time was necessary for the lady’s maid to dress the woman’s hair. But we were living in an era with minimal undergarments and electrical hair appliances. I simply couldn’t understand how she would fill that much time just getting dressed, applying make-up and putting her hair up.

Such thoughts and minor mysteries occupied me until half past five, and it was with a sense of relief that I turned the “Open” sign to “Closed” and locked the shop up. It hadn’t been a particularly difficult day, but it had been quiet. Without Dawn or Nathaniel to keep me company, I’d been a bit bored and lonely most of the afternoon. I’d no doubt business would start picking up again fairly soon with the holiday shopping season just around the corner, but for now, we were in a bit of a lull.

I went upstairs with only minimal hope that the bathroom would be free. I needed a shower and a shave before we headed out, which meant I required at least fifteen minutes in there. Unfortunately, Dawn’s track record didn’t bode well for my chances. I glanced down the hall and saw the door was closed and bit back a sigh at my own short-sightedness for not giving her a private bathroom when I had the chance. I knocked, saying, “Dawn? How long will you be? I need to get in there.”

“Five minutes, but you have to wait in your room,” she called back to me.

“What? Why?” Try though I might, I could never quite manage to understand the strange rituals that teenagers seemed to find endlessly fascinating.

“I don’t want you to see me before I’m finished getting ready. Now shoo!”

Five minutes in the lexicon of Dawn actually meant twenty to thirty minutes. I’d be lucky to get dried off before I had to get dressed. There was no help for it, and I knew for a fact she wouldn’t be hurried, so I headed off to my bedroom to pull out my tuxedo.

I’d bought the suit some eighteen months ago, when I realized that the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce fancied itself the glue that held the city together. With that attitude, it was only natural for Chamber leaders to assume that we of the business community were also the cream of local society, which meant every evening function was formal. It was less costly to buy a decent tuxedo than it was to rent one, and frankly it was less worrisome to wear. No matter how good the establishment, there was no guarantee that the cleaning job following a rent-out would be thorough.

The tuxedo had been professionally pressed on Wednesday, and when I pulled it out of its bag, I was pleased to see it had survived the intervening time in my closet without gaining wrinkles. As these things went, the style was on the conservative side. The only nod to fanciness was a matching waistcoat with a black-on-black embroidered paisley pattern. My shirt was made of white linen, and it, too, had been pressed. I had just pulled the studs out from my dresser when I heard Dawn call out that the bathroom was free. A glance at my watch told me a new record had been set — she’d actually left the room in eight minutes.

I wasted no time in getting into the shower, as there was always the possibility she would change her mind and try to get back in. As I undressed, I thought briefly about the warding I’d set the night before, then closed my mind to it. I hadn’t heard from Buffy in several days, and Dawn would have mentioned it if she were around this evening. At least, I hoped she would.

Dratted paranoia. I finished my shower as quickly as possible and donned my bathrobe before brushing my teeth and running an electric razor over my face. After a quick splash of aftershave, I headed back to my room, calling out to Dawn that the bathroom was free again. She didn’t respond directly, but I heard one door open and a second one slam before I reached my bedroom.

Thirty minutes later, I was dressed and waiting in the living room, a glass of scotch in hand. I had no intention of bothering with the cash bar at the dance, as I’d made that mistake last year. It was amazing to me how the organizers could delude themselves into thinking this was a premier social event while at the same time skimping on the alcohol and serving swill at greatly exaggerated prices.

I had just taken a sip when Dawn appeared in the doorway, and I very nearly choked at the vision she presented. Her hair was done in a complicated style involving multiple curls falling from the crown down the sides and back of her head. She was wearing a shimmering gown that appeared to be a deep royal blue when the light hit it at one angle, and a deep emerald green when seen from a different angle. The style was reminiscent of evening gowns from the Fifties, with the hemline just above the ankle. The bodice was tight-fitting and shaped like a heart, and the skirt flared outward in a graceful bell shape. Twin straps stretched over her shoulders, leaving her arms bare but for the matching wrap draped around her. I was happy to see her in high heels for the evening — we’d gone through a bad patch not long ago when she became unreasonably self-conscious about her height. She was stunningly beautiful, but that wasn’t why I choked.

It took a few tries, but I finally managed to stammer out, “You — your — Cleavage!”

She rolled her eyes at me and spoke to me as if I were a child, saying, “Well, duh! I’m a woman. I have breasts. And when they get smooshed together in just the right way, I get cleavage.”

“You can’t mean to go out in public dressed that way!” Yes, I was overreacting. And the gown was probably no worse than Buffy’s prom dress had been, but dammit! I knew perfectly well what all the men would be thinking, and I didn’t want them thinking it about my daughter.

“Oh, please. My bikini covers less than this dress, and you didn’t go all ‘Father Knows Best’ when we went to Florida last year,” she said with infuriating logic.

“That’s only because I wasn’t able to lock you in the hotel room,” I said with as much dignity as I could summon up. For a moment, I wondered if I would be any calmer had I raised Dawn from infancy, then I dismissed the notion. I had no doubt I would be just this protective and overbearing, if not more so.

After a long moment of glaring at one another, Dawn finally said, “Are you still in Cave Dad mode, or can we go now?”

I shot a sour look in her direction before abandoning the remainder of my scotch and saying, “Fine. Ignore the trauma you’re putting me through.”

In an obscenely cheerful voice, she answered, “Okay. I will,” before she headed to the door. I helped her on with her coat before putting my own on. The weather had turned cool, and rain had threatened all day.

We had just gotten in the car when she asked, “Is Jean-Claude right? Are you vulnerable?”

Her question came out of nowhere, and I couldn’t quite understand what she was asking. Before I turned the key, I looked at her with a frown and said, “What? What are you talking about?”

She had the look of a deer caught in the headlights, and I suspected that she hadn’t meant to ask her original question. In a quiet, hesitant voice, she said, “That claim — I guess Angel made it, huh? — is he right? Are you vulnerable?”

“I —” I took a deep breath before asking, “How did you hear about that?” Remarkably, I managed to keep my voice calm and low, even though I suspected I knew who let the cat out of the bag. I would deal with Jason —

“Nate. He said something about it last week,” she said in a rush. “Don’t be mad at him — please? He thought I knew about it. I mean, with the whole Angel thing, and I could tell there was something off in the way Jean-Claude was looking at you that first night and the way he hangs around, and — and I’m babbling. Sorry.”

Blast. Damn and blast. After another deep breath, I finally started the car, but I made no move to leave the alley. It had started to drizzle, so I turned on the windshield wipers at their slowest setting. When I had done all the stalling I could think of, I said quietly, “I don’t know how vulnerable I am, though given Jean-Claude’s reaction, I suspect I may be in some danger. I haven’t been able to find complete answers, however, and there’s no one whom I trust enough to ask.”

“But if you _are_ open to attack, he can protect you, right?” She sounded so bloody hopeful and innocent that I hated to destroy her illusions. Truthfully, she had reason to sound at least somewhat optimistic regarding Jean-Claude’s intentions. The little knowledge I had been able to glean without asking Ms. Blake indicated that he was an exception among his kind. Unlike many other master vampires, he seemed to be more interested in developing partnerships with humans, rather than subjugating them to his will.

I couldn’t tell her that, though, without encouraging false hopes. Instead, I chose to highlight the reality of the situation. “If I accept that protection, I will most likely be making myself completely vulnerable to his whims.”

“But maybe not. I mean, he seems really —”

“He’s a vampire, Dawn,” I said in an effort to derail that train of thought before it got too far away from the station. “He’s not human, and he doesn’t do things out of human motivation. Whatever the reason for his offer, you can be assured that it is _not_ altruism.”

“What would he get out of it?” At least she wasn’t completely hostile to my point of view, which was a relief. I didn’t think I could handle any further romanticization of his offer or of the situation.

“Aside from control over me? I would hazard a guess that he wants control over my magic as well,” I answered. There were other things he wanted as well, but I didn’t need or want to explain that aspect to her. She would only end up inviting him to dinner to find out exactly what his intentions toward me were.

“Maybe you could do up a contract beforehand,” she said with the air of someone convinced they had just come up with a brilliant idea. It wasn’t necessarily a bad idea, but I couldn’t imagine it being nearly as effective as attempting to drain the oceans with a thimble.

My response may have been a touch cynical. “Oh, right. I can just hear that conversation now. ‘Izzie? Yes, it’s Rupert. Listen, the master of the city wants to claim me, but I want a contract first. Could you draw one up? And how are the children? Is Hector well? Lovely. Ta!’”

“You’re abusing sarcasm,” she said, glaring at me in the dim glow from the sodium lamps.

“And you’re not being realistic. We’ve talked about this before,” I said, frustrated that she wasn’t immediately acceding to my older and therefore wiser judgement.

“Yeah, but that’s when it was Spike. The vamps here are different,” she responded, determined to make her point. It was a valid one in terms of what happened after a person was turned, but even so, there were similarities.

“They’re not all that different,” I said through a tightening jaw. “Both breeds are obsessed with power, a fact which offers me no comfort whatsoever.” She started to respond, but I pulled out of the alley, saying, “No. I don’t wish to discuss this further. We’re going to be late.”


	3. Chapter 3

_Journal of Rupert Giles, Watcher_

_June 5, 1998_

_Xander was kind enough to go to my apartment and bring my journal to me. I can’t think why I failed to pack it to begin with. In any event, I will at least have something to occupy myself whilst spending time in hospital. I tried to tell Dr. Herlihy that I would be better off at home, but he’s determined to force me to stay for at least three days._

_I keep looking at the wreck of my right hand, and for the life of me, I can’t imagine how he will be able to rebuild the bone structure sufficiently to make the hand look the way it should, let alone to regain any level of function. At least the swelling has finally gone down, and I no longer seem to have a balloon attached at the end of my arm._

_Willow just stopped in with things she picked up at the gift shop. They’re all children’s games, and I wonder if it’s a sly comment about the way I’ve been behaving since being told I would be admitted for the surgery. Possibly, but I doubt it. Willow is too open and honest with her heart for such deception. _

_Such a dear girl. She and Xander have been a tremendous help to me, and both have promised to continue the search for Buffy whilst I’m held hostage by the American health care system._

*****

October 23, 2004

As we drove to Cranbrook Hall, Dawn responded to my conversational efforts in words of one syllable or less. This would never do. I pulled into the parking lot of a small strip mall and turned to her to say, “I’m sorry, Dawn. I shouldn’t have been so rude earlier, but you’re pressing me on a very sore point.”

She was looking down at her hands, clasped tightly on her lap, and she didn’t answer for the longest time. I was about to give up and start driving to the dance again when she finally said, “I’m sorry you feel that way, but it’s a hugely sore point for me that you might be in danger when you don’t have to be.”

“Would you have me jump from the fry pan into the fire?” I think we could have both wished for a more reasonable tone from me, but she was pushing me to a limit I hadn’t seen in quite some time. No matter how much she might want otherwise, I was not about to be coerced into making an irrevocable decision with unknown and potentially dire consequences.

“At least if you’re in the fire, you can jump away to safety,” she muttered.

I took a deep breath, held it for a count of ten, then held it for another count of ten before releasing it slowly. “And what if I’m in the fire, but jump up into the fry pan? There is no easy answer to this, and I won’t be compelled — not by you, not by Jean-Claude,” I bit out.

I was about two steps shy of furious before my mood finally penetrated Dawn’s increasingly stubborn view of the situation. When next she spoke, her tone was conciliatory. “I’m sorry, Dad. But I’m afraid for you. I remember hearing Xander and Willow talk to Mom — telling her about Buffy and about how Angel tortured you, and all I can think is that if some other vamp decides they want you, the same thing will happen all over again.”

Not even Willow and Xander knew the true extent of the injuries Angelus inflicted on my mind, body and soul, and I was immensely grateful for that. I’d forgotten about Dawn’s penchant for playing at being Harriet the Spy when she was younger, and until this moment, I hadn’t realized she knew anything more than vague generalities about the event. I didn’t really want to discuss it with her, but I needed her to understand the difference between that situation and this.

I glanced out the window. We were in front of a diner, and I decided at that moment that we were better off foregoing the Chamber’s dinner. It was unlikely we would miss very much — last year’s food had been one or two steps improved from rubber, and it was unlikely that this year’s offering would be any better. The only reason I had any interest in attending at all was for the chance to get out on the dance floor, a concept which would have made me laugh in disbelief just two years ago.

I turned off the engine and said, “Let’s get something to eat here. I’ve no doubt it will be better than what we would be served at the ball.”

She looked out the window and said, “At least we won’t be underdressed.”

It was a feeble joke, but the intent behind it was the main thing. She wanted us to be friends again. I did, too, but not at the expense of a much-needed reality check. I stepped out of the car and walked around to her door to let her out. She gave me the same look she always did when I displayed the manners of my generation, and then she took my arm as we walked into the restaurant. The sole waitress on duty gave us a startled look, but we drew no one else’s attention.

After we ordered dinner — we both opted for meatloaf and mashed potatoes — I picked up her hand from the table and said, “You need to understand why Angelus did what he did.”

“I know Angel wanted information, but —”

“But nothing. He drew upon two centuries of experience in an effort to break my will so I would tell him what he wanted to know,” I said. I rubbed the back of her hand with my thumb, hoping the gentle motion would soothe her.

Not a chance.

“And what makes you think some other vamp won’t do the same thing to get you to go along,” she said in a low, intense whisper.

“Angelus tortured me with an eye to killing me when he was finished. If a vampire here were to take an interest, they would be far more likely to keep me whole and in my right mind. An insane sorcerer is no good to anyone,” I said as bluntly as possible. I wasn’t a complete Pollyanna — I knew torture was a strong possibility in such a scenario, but I couldn’t imagine any of the vampires in this world being interested in going to the lengths Angelus went. For one thing, they tended to be more pragmatic, and I doubted there was a single vampire in this world who would think ending it was a good idea. They would be too concerned about their food source.

“Wouldn’t you be better off with the vamp you know than the one you don’t?” I grimaced. Honestly, I should know better by now than to hope she won’t think her way through to the logical answer.

“Yes —” I held up my hand when she started to interrupt and said, “Yes, I would. In theory. But you’re still ignoring my well-honed mistrust of _any_ vampire, let alone one who seems to want to help me. If Jean-Claude wants to claim me, it isn’t simply a matter of offering a helping fang. He will be getting something in return, and I have only educated guesses as to what that something might be. I’m not certain I can pay the price for his protection.”

She sat there, looking at me, but her mind was elsewhere as she considered what I said. We didn’t say anything more until our meals were served, and even then, it was only a request for salt or pepper. The diner’s phone rang once, and as I ate, I watched the play of emotion on the waitress’ face as she listened. She caught me watching her, and we both looked away, embarrassed, just before she finished her conversation and hung up. It wasn’t until after the young woman — Shelly was the name on her tag — removed the remains of our meal that Dawn finally spoke again.

“You need to find out what he wants from you,” she said firmly.

I grimaced again before answering, “But that would involve speaking to him.” I may have sounded a touch petulant. There weren’t many things I wanted to sweep under the carpet, but this topic was one of them.

She rolled her eyes at me and said, “Who’s the parent here? ‘Cause if it’s me, we have some serious talking to do.”

I sighed and said, “I know you’re right, Dawn, but I can’t get past the fact that he’s a vampire and will continue to be a vampire. My history — Angelus — that won’t change either.” I held up my right hand and said, “This is a permanent reminder that vampires are not to be trusted.”

We continued rehashing the same old issues, and so intent were we on our conversation that neither of us noticed the eavesdropper behind me. I jumped when I heard an all-too-familiar voice say, “You know, Giles, aside from Jean-Claude, I think you’re the only person I’ve ever met who would even consider going formal to eat in a diner. Most of the men I know would think a diner meant jeans and a t-shirt.”

I took a deeper-than-normal breath, and without turning around, I said, “Ms. Blake. What an unhappy surprise.”

She came up next to me and bumped me with her hip until I finally moved deeper into the booth. The waitress held up a pot of coffee, but Ms. Blake thanked her and said no before telling Dawn, “Most people have enough common sense to do what they’re told if they know something bad could happen otherwise.” She turned slightly toward me and said, “Why didn’t you tell me what Jean-Claude said to you?”

“You haven’t exactly been available,” I muttered. It was true. Dawn and I had been to her house twice to work on the warding for which she contracted, and both times, she had been carefully absent from the property.

“You could have called. When it comes to something like this, I would have spoken to you,” she said. Her voice sounded a bit off, and I realized it was because she was furious. At least she seemed to be learning — she hadn’t pulled a gun on me.

“And you just happened to be passing by, saw us sitting here and dropped in to tell me this?” A kindly vampire wasn’t the only thing that could arouse my suspicions. Unexpected meetings had the same effect.

“I didn’t ‘just happen’ to be doing anything. Jean-Claude told me tonight he’s had every wolf, rat and cat in the city keeping track of you two, and when you didn’t show up at the party, he hit the panic button.” She tilted her head toward the waitress and said, “Shelly’s the one who reported your location.”

I looked at Ms. Blake and finally noticed she was dressed for a formal evening out. “You were at the ball?”

“Yeah. Jean-Claude’s date, but I didn’t know why until you two were no-shows. Are you done eating?” She sounded impatient, far more so than usual.

“Yes, but —”

She pulled a few bills out of her purse and said, “We have to get you out of here.”

“Ms. Blake, what exactly is going on?” Her behavior was starting to bother me. She had the feel of someone in an incipient state of panic. Dawn picked up on it as well, her eyes growing large as she looked to me for direction. At the moment, I was damned if I knew what to do.

“Bad things are going on,” she said as she stood up. “Really bad things are going on, and right now, you have a big old ‘Claim Me’ sign stuck on your back. Your choice is Jean-Claude or whichever member of the Vampire Council catches you first. In other words, your life sucks royally. Call me biased, but I honestly think you’re better off accepting the claim of a vampire who sees humans as something more than food or fodder.”

“Vampire Council? Explain yourself,” I said, my face settling into a frown.

“The ruling council of vampires has sent a delegation to our fair city. It seems that in addition to them being here to deal with Jean-Claude, they’re also here because someone made himself just a little conspicuous during a temper tantrum he threw about a month ago. Gee. I wonder who that someone could have been,” she said, looking directly at me.

In a strangled voice, Dawn said, “Dad —”

My jaw was clenched rather tightly, but I managed to get out, “What are you saying to me?”

She put her hands on the table and bent down to put her face in mine, saying, “Here’s the _Fun with Dick and Jane_ version: See Giles. See Giles work big black magic. See vampires hear about it. See Giles with an old vampire claim. See vampires drool over Giles’ old vampire claim. See Giles become some vampire’s meat. Getting it yet?” I thought her sarcasm lacked a certain cadence, but the woman certainly had potential.

“This is Jean-Claude’s territory — wouldn’t they have to ask permission first?” I was starting to get a bit desperate to find an escape out of this particular corner.

“Ordinarily, yes,” she said, her eyes filling with unexpected compassion. “But the rules go out the window when it comes to an abandoned claim — it’s pretty much finders keepers, losers weepers. Frankly, I’m surprised you haven’t been snatched up before now.”

I felt as if my bowels had suddenly turned to ice. It was one thing to discuss a possibility in abstract. It was entirely another thing to deal with a concrete reality. Whether I liked it or not, Jean-Claude would be claiming me soon, because Dawn was right — better the devil you know than the one you don’t. I could only hope he at least approximated Ms. Blake’s description as a vampire who would treat me better than most others would.

“Right,” I said, sliding along the bench to get out of the booth. I picked up Ms. Blake’s money and handed it to her before pulling out my wallet. She rolled her eyes at me but took back her money nonetheless. Dawn stood up and looked around, as if expecting an attack at any moment.

I dropped two twenties on the table — Shelly deserved something for trying to help us — and said, “Where are we going?”

“You’re going to Circus of the Damned. Jason will be waiting for you outside — don’t let anyone else talk you into going with them. Dawn’s coming with me. I’m going to pick up the two women who guarded her the last time, then I’m taking all three back to your place. She’ll be safer there than anywhere else in the city,” she said, shooting a quelling look at Dawn to silence whatever objections she might try to come up with.

I added my own look and said, “You know she’s right, Dawn. You’ll be safest in the apartment. If I recall correctly, you liked the bodyguards you were given when Abigail took me.”

My heart nearly broke at the expression on Dawn’s face, but there was no help for it. I didn’t want her anywhere near me if there was a possibility she could once again be used in an attempt to coerce me. Her lower lip quivered a bit, but she managed not to cry. I drew her in for a hug and whispered, “I’ll call you when I can, pet. I love you.” I pulled back slightly to give her a kiss on the forehead then turned away before _I_ started to cry.

“Ms. Blake,” I said, not daring to turn around to look at Dawn again. “One question. What does Jean-Claude get by claiming me?”

There was a drawn-out silence behind me, one that was increasing my stress level with each passing moment. I held my ground until I heard, “He gets power. He gets you. And you get to live a mostly normal life. Come on, Dawn. My Jeep’s in back.”


	4. Chapter 4

_Journal of Rupert Giles_

_August 14, 2001_

_I’m trying very hard not to focus on what I’ve lost — what we’ve lost in coming to this world, because that way lies madness. But it’s difficult, especially on anniversaries. When I looked at the date on this morning’s newspaper, it took me a few minutes to realize today was Ethan’s birthday. _

_It’s been twenty-five years since we called each other mates, but I still miss him at odd moments, usually around this time of year. Then again, perhaps the timing isn’t so strange. The last time we’d raised Eyghon had been for his birthday, and that was the night Randall died._

_I still get sick with guilt when I think of that night. We should have been punished for that transgression, but Ethan and I survived, while the others perished. I don’t doubt that one of these days, the universe will catch up to me and demand payment in full._

*****

October 23, 2004

I was halfway to Circus of the Damned when I had to pull over so I could vomit. The diner’s food had indeed been better than what we’d been served at last year’s Hunter’s Ball, but the grease hadn’t played well with my increasingly strident sense of dread. I was either about to do something incredibly stupid or something incredibly desperate. More likely, it was both.

I couldn’t quite bring myself to get back into the driver’s seat. I’d always thought that if someone were going to their doom, they should be dragged kicking and screaming. It didn’t matter that I was on my way to save my own miserable hide. The problem was due solely to the nature of my so-called savior. In my heart, I could feel endless generations of Giles turning over in their grave at what I was about to do. After several calming breaths, I was finally able to get back in the car and continue on my way.

I focused intently on my driving in an effort not to think about what was to happen. I really didn’t know what a claim involved, though I had my suspicions, based on what Angelus had done. And once again I had to turn my thoughts firmly in a different direction. Any further speculation would result in me turning the car around to collect Dawn and driving as far away as possible. I needed to keep a tight rein on my incipient panic. Running away from the one hope of protection we had was insane.

Of course, I could always attempt to lock myself in my home between sunset and sunrise for the remainder of my life, just to avoid any possible contact with vampires. The only problem with that scenario was that I doubted I would be able to maintain the effort for longer than a year, possibly two. And what of Dawn? I could hardly lock her in for the rest of her life, and I would need to if I didn’t want a human servant kidnapping her to force me to do a vampire’s bidding. With the dubious patronage of Jean-Claude, Dawn should be safe from the depredations of other vampires.

I could see the gaudy spectacle of the Circus, and my stomach clenched as it threatened to rebel once more. I muttered, “You can do this, Ripper. Of all the things you’ve faced in your life, this doesn’t even make the top quarter of the list.”

It was a lie, of course, but it was comforting enough to get me to turn into the parking lot. I drove slowly — the drizzle had turned into rain, and the reflections from the overhead lights were making it difficult for me to see very far ahead.

It was as well that I was creeping along, otherwise I would have run Jason down. He appeared out of nowhere, and I pressed hard on the brakes even as I let loose with a sulphurous stream of profanity. He pounded on the passenger window, and I could hear him yelling at me to unlock the door. I did so, not because he demanded it, but because I could hear panic and fear in his voice.

He dropped into the passenger seat and closed the door, saying only, “Get the hell away from here. Now!”

I drove, unquestioning. For a beta to take that tone of voice, very bad things had to be nipping at our heels. We wandered aimlessly through St. Louis for the next half hour, and I kept an eye on Jason as he continually twisted around to see if anyone was following us. At last, he pulled out a cell phone to make a call. After he hung up, he directed me to go to Danse Macabre.

“What’s going on, Jason? I thought I was supposed to meet Jean-Claude at the Circus, not take the evening tour of the city,” I said, intending to get at least a few answers before we arrived at the club. He flinched away from my tone of voice, but I wasn’t about to let him off the hook. He didn’t answer immediately, so I prompted him with, “Well?”

“Some of the delegates from the Council showed up a little early,” he finally said. I looked over at him and saw that his eyes were wide and his skin pale in the glow of the streetlights. He looked bad enough to arouse my protective instincts, a response which made me even angrier. I was the bloody victim in all this, so why did I feel the need to go off and hurt the one who made him so fearful? Because I’m an altruistic half-wit.

In a quieter voice, I asked, “What did they do to you?”

“Nothing,” he said. His characteristic confidence was sadly missing when he added, “But that’s just for tonight. Tomorrow night is anyone’s guess.”

“Do you have to stay there?” Perhaps if he went away, he could avoid whatever unpleasantness the visitors might inflict.

“Yeah, I do. It’ll be better once Jean-Claude claims you,” he said, his tone of voice becoming more confident.

I frowned at that piece of news. I’d known _I_ was in trouble, but this was the first I’d heard of others suffering because of my stubbornness. “Why should that make things better?”

“They’ll stop trying to force people to tell them where you are,” he said, as if that made perfect sense.

I could feel my mouth open and close several times as I attempted to marshal my thoughts into some kind of order. I finally said, “Excuse me, but have they never heard of a curious bit of local lore known as the ‘phone book’?”

He let out a short bark of laughter and said, “That’s a little too modern for these vampires. Most of the ones on the Council think paper is a newfangled invention, and their human servants aren’t any better.”

I said nothing to that and was just thankful that most vampires were unable to change without significant impetus to do so. Had Spike never been chipped, he would have continued on his merrily evil way. I thought, anyway. There was still the troublesome issue of his having formed an alliance with his mortal enemy to stop Angelus. Most vampires wouldn’t have done so, and it had always bothered me that Spike had. It bespoke an ability to change a habit of thought, which was quite uncommon for vampires of either world.

I made my last turn and could see a crowd gathering in front of the club. Jason told me to stop at the curb and leave the keys in, as he would park my car in a different location. When I got out, I was hustled inside by one of the bouncers, and wasn’t given a chance to look back. It was just coming on nine o’clock, so the club wasn’t as crowded as I didn’t doubt it would be later on in the evening. Still, there were a number of young people determined to be seen at one of the “in” places. A few looked my way as I passed, and I wondered what they thought of me, an older man in an overcoat and a tuxedo, clearly out of his element.

At the back of the club, the bouncer, a vampire, remained silent as he directed me down three flights of stairs. By slight shifts of pressure on my back, he indicated which corridor to take. I gave up trying to maintain a sense of where I was. The maze down here wasn’t as bad as the one from which Jason had led me the morning I woke up in Jean-Claude’s lair, but it was problematic in its own way. I wouldn’t be able to find my way out unless I had a guide.

We stopped at a featureless door. All the corridors were featureless, in fact, which led me to believe that the level was designed for those who had supernatural senses. My escort knocked once. I didn’t hear a reply, but evidently, he did. He turned the knob and opened the door for me, stepping back so I could walk in.

Of course, walking in actually involved putting one foot in front of the other, which was a bit of a problem, because I was starting to get balky. The room wasn’t the den of iniquity I had tried very hard _not_ to imagine, but it was richly furnished nonetheless. Walnut panels lined the walls, and I could see a built-in bookshelf behind Jean-Claude. An Aubusson rug covered the floor, its colors rich and vibrant. I wondered absently how long he’d owned it — anything to delay the inevitable.

I was also waiting to be dragged kicking and screaming to my doom, but it was increasingly clear that it wasn’t going to happen. Neither the vampire in the room nor the one at my side showed any impatience with my inability to move forward. Both watched me with impassive eyes, the bouncer because he didn’t care whether or not I walked into the room and Jean-Claude, I was certain, because he wanted me to enter of my own free will. There would be no protestations of force down the road.

I felt my gorge begin to rise, and I fought it back as I strove for control. It wasn’t easy, but I finally managed to take that first step. The second and third steps were only slightly less difficult, and the fourth step brought me far enough into the room for my escort to close the door behind me. I remained at war with myself. My head was telling my heart and body that I had to stay if I were to have hope of anything remotely resembling a normal life for Dawn and me. My heart was screaming bloody murder over what I was about to do, and my body recognized the mortal threat sitting in front of me and was ready to flee, no matter what anyone else said.

Jean-Claude sat there and watched as I fought both learned and instinctive reactions. He was a perfect statue, unlike Angel and Spike, who inevitably mimicked the act of breathing when they were around humans. Jean-Claude was quite willing to display himself for what he was — a corpse. And lord, what a corpse. It unnerved me that even now, even as I was fighting back terror, I could still be affected by his beauty. I took a deep breath, and waited.

“I know this is difficult for you, _mon cher_, but it really is the best of all your bad options,” he said, his voice unexpectedly gentle as he finally reacted to my presence. After a brief pause, he added, “I would rather you had come to me of your own volition, not in response to a threat.”

I wanted to answer, but my mouth was horribly dry by this time, and I swallowed convulsively in an attempt to generate moisture. He stood and walked to a cabinet I hadn’t seen from the open door. He pulled a bottle of water from a small refrigerator and poured it into a glass. As I accepted it, I felt a sudden and unexpected kinship with Persephone, and I drank it down before I lost my nerve.

When I finished the water, I said, rather bitterly, “Despite the fact that I’m not here entirely of my own free will, you won’t ignore the opportunity, will you?”

“Of course not. I will not lie to you, Rupert. I want very much to claim you for myself, and I would have wanted this even without an old claim to entice me,” he said with a peculiar intensity. I didn’t know why he was bothering with an attempt at seduction. We both knew I’d given up on the notion of being able to continue on without his claim.

“Please — don’t try to tell me your reasons are anything other than a power grab,” I said. I attempted to put as much disgust into my voice as possible, but I doubt it did anything to disguise my horror at the situation.

He cocked his head and told me, “Certainly, your power was enough to attract my attention. But your other — assets — hold their own allure.”

“Right. I’ve seen your retinue, Jean-Claude. I hardly fit in,” I answered, surprised at my own level of rancor over the issue. I’d never worried overly much about my looks before, and it was an unpleasant feeling to do so now. My inner Ethan suggested I was jealous, and I ignored him with as much dignity as I could manage under the circumstances.

He sighed then, as if dealing with a recalcitrant child, and didn’t bother to respond to my last comments. He said, “I will do what I can to make this as gentle as possible for you, but you will need to lower your mental shields and allow me in.”

I accepted his course correction for our conversation, because really, the issue was beyond debate. I asked, “What exactly do you need to do to take over the claim?” It was the last chance I had to get information, but why I wanted it was beyond me. It wasn’t as if I could object to the ceremony or action or whatever it was. I would have to agree to it.

Actually, the reason behind my question wasn’t beyond me. No matter what I might be doing at any given point in time, I was a researcher at heart. Asking questions helped me to focus and to calm down.

“I will drink a small amount from you, then you will drink from me,” he said, watching me carefully. It triggered a memory of Angelus licking blood from my face, of him tearing a hole in his finger with a single fang, of him putting his finger to my lips. It hadn’t taken much, apparently.

“What else?” My voice was harsh. I wished it were otherwise, but fear and anxiety were still very much present.

“I must get into your mind, Rupert,” he said quite seriously. “I must leave my imprint there, so that others will see it and know that you belong to me.”

I jerked when he said “belong” with an ever-so-slight emphasis and wanted very much to put my fist in his face when I heard it. He had used the word deliberately, of that I was sure. He wanted no misunderstandings. He wanted to be sure I was aware of just what the claiming entailed from a vampire’s point of view.

“Ms. Blake said —” I had to break off for a moment when my stammer became so pronounced I couldn’t even get the next syllable started, let alone spoken. After a few moments, I had calmed enough to say, “She told me I would have a mostly normal life. Is that true?”

“You will be expected to attend to me at certain times. Aside from those functions, your life will be your own. I will do my best to ensure that your — duty — to me is not terribly onerous,” he said in a low, soothing voice.

This was all academic. We both knew I was there to accept his claim, and the longer I put him off, the harder it was going to be for me to get on with it. I could learn the rest later on, assuming I gained some measure of peace with my new position in life. I stood silent for some time, staring at the pattern on the carpet as I reminded myself once again that reasonable options were nil at this point.

Eventually, I looked at him again and asked, “Where will you take the blood?”

“Your wrist will be sufficient,” he answered. Jean-Claude had inhuman patience and stillness. They were enough to make me start rifling through my memories of some of Ethan’s old tricks, just to see if any of them might stir him to something greater than muted emotion.

I nodded once, then removed my jacket. Jean-Claude took it from me to hang in the closet. The gesture surprised me — I couldn’t imagine him playing valet to anyone, let alone a middle-aged man who very much wanted to be elsewhere.

I removed the stud from my right cuff and rolled the sleeve up. One more scar wouldn’t matter on that arm. When he came to stand in front of me, I swallowed one last time before offering my wrist to him.

“Your mind, Rupert. You must release the shields from your mind. You must grant me permission to enter, otherwise, this will be extremely painful for you,” he said, ignoring my wrist for the moment.

I looked into his eyes and noted that the pupils had disappeared. One by one, I forced my shields to drop, and as each one fell, I fell deeper into his gaze. It wasn’t long before the world was naught but a pair of midnight blue eyes looking into mine. I barely noticed as he lifted my wrist to his mouth, and when his fangs pierced my skin, I felt a fine tremor run through my body because of the pleasure his bite engendered. When he finished suckling at my arm, I watched as he tore the skin open on his wrist and offered it up to me.

I barely noticed licking the blood from his wound, because in less than a moment, I felt a flare of power as Jean-Claude’s claim took hold. I couldn’t help but feel just a touch of spiteful enjoyment as I saw his eyes fill with shock and consternation.


	5. Chapter 5

_Journal of Rupert Giles_

_August 2, 2001_

_It’s taken weeks of trial and error, but I finally found the trick to acclimating to the magic here — and not a moment too soon. After Saturday’s flare up, it’s a wonder I wasn’t arrested on the spot. I can only assume that no one in the bar was sensitive enough to detect it._

_Dawn has agreed to go to the beach tomorrow — though it wasn’t that difficult to persuade her — and I will spend the day weaving my energy with the power in the earth. It will allow random outbursts to disperse harmlessly into the ground rather than into the open. Build-up will be a problem at first, but I believe that with sufficient time, I will again be able to control all aspects of my magic._

*****

October 23, 2004

I had only a few moments to take pleasure in Jean-Claude’s surprise before I realized just what was happening. As badly as I had reacted to the magic in this world, he was reacting even worse to my innate magic. The effect on him was similar to someone grabbing hold of a live electrical wire, and the problem would soon spread to me if I couldn’t find a way to ground him.

The only option that presented itself with any haste was to reach back through our connection and take hold of his power to force the same adaptation I’d undergone a few years earlier. It wasn’t the brightest decision I’ve ever made, but in my defense, I had to act quickly, and there were no other choices that even approached reasonable. It was a shame Jean-Claude didn’t see it that way.

He was livid that I had dared to reach him through our new connection, but I was too busy to care. I did, however, wince at his tightening grip on my wrist. Fortunately, just as he was about to break it, he loosened his fingers. Gratitude would have been appropriate at that point, but my patience was nearing its end. I had accepted his claim in the hope that I would be able to spoil fat and happy grandchildren one day. I didn’t expect to have to fight for my life almost immediately — if I wasn’t able to stabilize our energies, I’d no doubt I would end up in a coma, and I had no idea what would happen to him.

Angry though he was, he could see the sense of what I was trying to do. And to give him credit, he even managed to provide some assistance. The only problems remaining were two other energies which had somehow entered the mix. One stream of power seemed vaguely familiar, but the other was completely alien to me — it had a wild, untamed feel to it. I examined them for a moment, perplexed as to what, if anything, I should do. Jean-Claude finally said, “Do what you must to acclimate them to your power. I have no desire to repeat this experience.”

I murmured, “Nor do I,” before tracing the energies back to their respective source. I followed the vaguely familiar power first and was shocked to find myself on the receiving end of one of Ms. Blake’s diatribes.

“What the hell are you doing in my mind?” As far as I could tell, the woman was in a perpetual state of anger. She didn’t have a range of emotion so much as she had a variety of ill tempers.

“Trust me — had I a choice in the matter, I would be elsewhere. Now do be quiet for a moment, if you can possibly manage it,” I said, as I examined her magic. It would be easier to work with her than it had been with Jean-Claude, simply due to the fact that her power was similar to mine. Plus, she was sufficiently removed from him that there was only a mild disruption in her energy.

She sounded aggrieved when she said, “This claim is between you and Jean-Claude — why are you dragging me into it?”

I ignored her question and instead sent her an image, saying, “This is what I need to do to stabilize our energies. Do you understand what you must do to facilitate the process?”

She spluttered a bit before answering, “Yes, I can manage that, but not if you don’t explain why you’re dragging Richard and me into this.”

I sighed, both physically and mentally, irritated with Jean-Claude for not responding to her. And he had no intention of doing so. I’m not sure how he managed it, but he made it quite clear that he blamed me for this state of affairs, so it was up to me to soothe ruffled feathers. The unfortunate part of all of this was that I tended to agree with him. I should have asked more questions before we started, and I certainly should have remembered my own problems.

I set aside the question of fault for the moment and said, “I presume this Richard is the other source of energy I felt in Jean-Claude?”

“Yes. Now answer the damn question,” she said, her anger shifting into a subtle new key.

“When Jean-Claude claimed me, he suffered a — an allergic reaction of sorts. I didn’t realize that he was tied so intimately to two others, but given that he is, I need to ensure that your energies don’t precipitate problems in the future,” I answered. I wondered if I would ever get to the point where I was the one who was able to sit and listen to someone else explain what just happened. I was a bit tired of being the one who always had the answers.

“So all this is really _your_ fault,” she said as nastily as possible. I wasn’t sure if she had sensed my minor guilt or not, but her attitude was the last straw, and, as they say, I lost it.

Just a bit.

“No, it is _not_ my bloody fault! If you wish to assign blame, look no further than Angelus. He was the bastard who put me into such an untenable position to begin with. Six years of nightmares due to that monster, and I don’t doubt I’m in for a lifetime of new nightmares now that I’ve just allowed myself to become Jean-Claude’s property,” I shouted, warming up to my rant. I really didn’t care that neither Ms. Blake, Jean-Claude nor the mysterious Richard knew about whom or what I was talking.

“I have had it up to my neck with vampires and their idiotic power plays and their foolish attempts to destroy the world. Every time I turn around, there’s another one just waiting to make my life miserable. We’d no sooner gotten rid of Angel when Spike decided to come back to town. And if it wasn’t Spike, it was that half-wit, Harmony. But at least in my world, I had the right to stake a vampire if it got to be too annoying. A nicely pointed piece of wood to the heart, and poof, it was just so much dust in the wind. The best part? No one cared, with the possible exception of its minions. Here, you have to get a bloody writ of execution. Are you people _quite_ insane? What kind of government grants rights to the undead?”

I would have continued on in that vein indefinitely if Jean-Claude hadn’t finally intervened. I wasn’t sure what he did, but the effect was similar to a fast-acting psychotropic drug. My anger was shut down completely, and so, too, was my rant. I looked at him, waiting for some kind of instruction, and when he was certain that I had indeed calmed down enough to hear him, he said, “Perhaps you should take care of Anita and Richard first. When you have finished, we can chat, yes?”

I blinked and said, “Hm? Oh. Yes. Of course. Anita and Richard.”

“And we will talk when you are through,” he prompted, his pupils completely gone.

“And we will talk when I’m through,” I agreed, even as I realized my anger hadn’t disappeared. It was still going at a full boil beneath Jean-Claude’s control, but I couldn’t quite connect to it at the moment. Nor could I quite care about how angry I was.

I returned my attention to Anita and said in a pleasant tone, “Are you ready, then?”

She seemed to be saying something to Jean-Claude — and perhaps the other fellow as well — but she was able to keep their conversation private. I wondered idly if that was a trick I would need or be able to learn. Perhaps she could teach me. When she finally responded to me, she said in a far more gentle tone than I’d ever heard from her before, “As soon as you’re done with Richard and me, Jean-Claude has promised to release your emotions. Do you understand?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure that’s a very good idea. At the moment, I’m more likely to stake him than talk to him,” I answered agreeably. It was very peculiar, hearing myself talk of eliminating someone in the same tone I used to discuss the weather. I could tell it made Jean-Claude uncomfortable, but even as I couldn’t bring myself to care, nor could I bring myself to gloat. Perhaps I would be able to do so later.

“I’m not too happy with him either right now, but I’ll be with the two of you soon,” she said. “He won’t release you until I get there, so you should be safe together.”

“Alright,” I said, content with her assurance. “Now, are you ready to adjust your energies?”

As I expected, it didn’t take very long. She was quite familiar with her own magic, and she was able to make suggestions so as to provide a better merging. She was a bit curious about some of the shortcuts I was taking, and I explained that I was using my link with Jean-Claude to facilitate the process. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, Anita, but I really don’t like you all that much,” I said in the same pleasant tone I’d been using since my new master clamped down on me. “I’d rather not have a connection with you that’s independent of Jean-Claude.”

“That’s okay, Giles. I’m not too fond of you, either,” she said. Sounding a bit puzzled, she added, “So tell me, when did you get to be on a first-name basis with me? I thought that required sex first.”

“Humor? From you? I didn’t think you were capable of such a thing,” I answered. If I’d been able to feel any real emotion, I would have been overjoyed at the fact that I could still express sarcasm in words, if not in tone.

“Learn something new every day, don’t you? So really — how do I rate?” I was surprised she even had to ask the question — or that she cared. Much though I disliked her, I had an honest respect for her intelligence. On the other hand, intelligence didn’t equal empathy, and I hadn’t seen enough evidence of that in her. Before tonight, that is.

“A mental connection is far more intimate than a physical encounter. Calling you ‘Ms. Blake’ at this point would be more of a slap in the face than it would have been had we actually made love,” I said as I took one last look at the melding of our energies. “I think everything is settled here. Would you mind introducing me to Richard? I don’t wish to just blunder in on my own.”

“Jean-Claude’s been talking to him. He’ll be expecting you,” she said in a short tone. Clearly, Richard was a touchy subject.

“I really would prefer —”

“Too bad. I have to get moving again so I can get to the club. I’ll see you in ten minutes or so,” she said, abruptly shutting me out. If she’d been driving when the connection opened so suddenly, her ire was completely understandable. I just wondered why she hadn’t said anything about it before now.

I was still staring at Jean-Claude when I became aware of the room again. I waited for him to acknowledge me before saying, “Shall I meet Richard, then?”

Despite the fact that he had complete control over my emotional reactions, I could tell he remained wary of me. It would be something to celebrate later, assuming he released his control as promised. Anita might trust him, but I doubted I ever would, especially after this little display of his power over me.

“Richard is not happy about this,” he said as a warning.

“Neither am I, but necessity forces this particular action,” I answered just before following the other connection back to its owner.

His magic had the feel of the woods and the untamed beasts, and it shimmered and sparked as it met my magic. The effect was unexpectedly beautiful, and I made a mental note to curse Jean-Claude for my inability to enjoy the image as thoroughly as possible. Still, lovely though it was, there was a hard wall of bitter anger just behind it. I hadn’t thought anyone could be angrier than Anita, but I’d just been proven wrong. I changed my mind about Jean-Claude’s interference in my capacity to experience emotion. Had I entered Richard’s mind with my own anger fully expressed, I believe the two of us may well have done serious damage to one another.

“Good evening,” I said blandly. “My name is Rupert Giles.”

“I know who you are. Do what you have to and get the hell out,” he growled. I considered that for a moment and realized that yes, he had indeed growled out that sentence. Wolf, perhaps? It would explain the sense I had of his power.

“Very well. This is what you must do,” I said, sending an image, much the way I had sent one to Anita. “Will you be able to manage that?”

He bit out, “Yes,” then fell silent as I began to work. His power was quite slippery, and I found it difficult to manage properly. It took several tries before I was finally able to learn the trick of handling his energy, and it was no thanks to him. I didn’t doubt he could have helped me at any moment in the process, but he was behaving like a sullen child.

“I’m not a child,” he said in response to my unstated thought. Lovely. I was being polite and not paying attention to his random musings, but he was listening in on mine.

I paused in my work to say, “If you wish to be thought of as an adult, then you should act like one.”

“You have no idea who I am or what my life is like!”

I revised my estimate of his attitude to sullen teenager and was mildly amused by his outrage. Yes, it was definitely a good thing that Jean-Claude had intervened. “We all have problems,” I answered in the same mild tone I’d been using. “Frankly, yours are the least of my concerns. Are you ready to do what you must?”

“Are you sleeping with him yet?”

The question came out of nowhere, and I felt Jean-Claude’s control over my emotions slip briefly, but not so briefly that my rage couldn’t flare hot and bright. Unfortunately, it was out of reach again by the time I spoke. I sounded unconcerned when I replied, “Your question was incredibly rude. I can only assume jealousy drove you to ask it. It’s time for you to finish weaving our energies. Please do so immediately so that we can end this encounter.”

He didn’t answer, other than to do as I requested. I noticed that his own anger had retreated somewhat, but whether in response to my rage or my words, I couldn’t tell. And, of course, I didn’t care. I knew a part of me wanted to — very much — but I wouldn’t be permitted that luxury until I was finished, assuming Jean-Claude kept his word.

When the merging was complete, I left his mind. There was nothing else to say that wouldn’t enrage or insult him, and I saw no reason to do either at the moment. Perhaps there would be another opportunity to continue our discussion — at a time when I was again in charge of my faculties. Or perhaps I wouldn’t bother. Having never heard of him before tonight, I doubted we would cross paths again.

“You are mistaken, _mon cher_,” Jean-Claude said, breaking into my reverie. “You will meet him in four nights.”

I hadn’t realized how long I’d been working with Richard’s power until I saw that Anita was standing in the office. She displayed the same wariness she’d had when she confronted me a month earlier. It was understandable, given that I’d said I would kill her lover. A moment later, however, I realized that neither of them was overly concerned by my threat. I concentrated on my link with Jean-Claude and found the real reason for their concern — the phrase, “in my world,” resounded in his mind, and I could hear an echo of it coming from Anita.

I sighed and looked at them both before saying to him, “I believe you were going to release my emotions as soon as I stabilized Anita’s and Richard’s energy. I have done so, and I will not talk to you about anything until you keep your promise.”


	6. Chapter 6

_Journal of Rupert Giles, Watcher_

_March 3, 1997_

_I’ve been reviewing Jamison-Smythe’s early reports, but they are quite perplexing. He starts out reasonably enough, but as the days progress, he seems to lose his focus. I can’t imagine why. Granted, I’ve never had the honor of working with a newly-called Slayer, but it seems to me that he should have been able to concentrate more intently on his duties as a Watcher rather than expounding at length over Miss Summers’ personal qualities._

_She seems to be a nice enough girl, from what he writes, though a bit vain and frivolous. I’ve no doubt she’ll settle into a more sober attitude when she arrives here in Sunnydale. Life on a hellmouth, for I feel certain that’s what lurks beneath the town, will force a change in her perspective._

*****

October 23, 2004

I was twenty-two years old when I learned the trick of thinking in a foreign language. A combination of drugs, alcohol and magic had left me somewhat paranoid, especially when it came to Ethan. I’d become convinced that he could read my mind, and rather than do the sensible thing — leave — I made the addle-brained decision to think in Sumerian whenever I was with him.

It was a particularly useful trick right at the moment, because while Jean-Claude was trying to break through to my memories, I was busily practicing my Sumerian in my review of the multiplication table. It was the mental equivalent of the two-finger salute combined with slamming a door in his face. I could feel his increasing irritation with me, but as he hadn’t yet released my emotions, I remained placid in the face of his anger. I might no longer have my freedom, but that in no way prevented me from rattling my chains.

Unfortunately, that chain-rattling incited him to increase his pressure on my mind. I was approaching my breaking point when a memory of Angelus escaped what little control I had. He had been inflicting various injuries for several hours at that point and had reached a stage where he decided he needed a rest. I was stripped by then, and as he spoke to me of what was to come in our time together, Angelus took great pleasure in putting out his cigarettes on my right buttock. I didn’t learn until much later that the pattern he’d inflicted was a rather grotesque smiley face.

Jean-Claude’s disgust at the memory was palpable through our link, and he immediately stopped attempting to force me. Without warning, I could suddenly feel again, and my first act was to swing at his face. It was a stupid move, and I was lucky I didn’t break any bones when my fist connected with his jaw. The fact that he didn’t retaliate was beyond luck — it was miraculous. I wasn’t sure why he was permitting me this act of defiance, but I didn’t doubt it was the one and only time I would be permitted to attack him.

“I have kept my promise, Rupert. It is time for you to keep yours,” he said, his voice flat and dead. Not deadly, mind you, but dead.

I could still feel his presence in my mind, but I could tell he was staying away my thoughts and memories. He wasn’t attempting to pry secrets from me, and that alone made me feel somewhat better. I took a deep breath, but really, what could I say? It should have been a fairly easy conversation to start, but three and a half years of absolute reticence about my true history made me choke on the words.

Ultimately, I chose the simplest statement of fact, adding detail to what they’d already been told. I said, “Dawn and I fell through a portal from our world into yours.” An irresistible impulse led me to add, “May I go home now?”

Anita, at least, was amused. It was all she could do not to laugh outright, and I still heard a suspicious cough from her corner of the office. Jean-Claude’s jaw tensed slightly, but that was all the reaction he had to his human servant’s near-outburst.

“I think not. We have much more to discuss before you can return home,” he said, choosing to treat my request seriously. I was frankly surprised he hadn’t simply backhanded me for my insolence. I think I would have preferred him to do so, as it would have underscored our new relationship. Instead, he was treating me as an individual, not property, and it confused me.

I sighed, then, my anger and defiance deflating at once, and said, “What do you wish to talk about?”

He gestured to a small couch I hadn’t noticed before, and I reluctantly sat down. Jean-Claude joined me, picking up my right hand as he said softly, “Speak to me of Angelus.”

Bloody vampire. He _would_ choose the one topic guaranteed to bring nightmares. Still, it wasn’t enough to say he was a vampire with a mission. In order to understand Angelus, Jean-Claude would need to understand my background, and perhaps that was his point.

I bit back a sigh and considered how much to say. Giving them the full history of the Slayer and the Watcher’s Council seemed a bit much, but they needed to know at least part of it to understand how I came to receive Angelus’ claim. I was looking at Anita when I said thoughtfully, “You aren’t the first Slayer to fall in love with a vampire.”

She jumped slightly at the word I used and said, “I’m called the Executioner.”

“Either way, you have a mandate to kill vampires, do you not?” Yes, making that initial comparison would help with the rest of the story.

She frowned, no doubt thinking I was setting a trap for her, but finally answered, “When I have a court order to do so, yes.”

“In this, your world, the question of whether vampires have souls is a matter for some debate, which, I suppose, is the reason the undead were granted civil rights,” I said. Anita started to respond, but at a glance from Jean-Claude, she subsided into silence. “In my world, vampires are most decidedly without a human soul. At the moment a person is turned, a demon takes over the body and suffuses it with its spirit. The result is a half-breed that can look human up until its feed is upon it. At that moment, its true visage appears.”

I made a deliberate attempt to project an image of Angelus shifting to game face, but I miscalculated the effort required. Jean-Claude and Anita started, and both had a look of pain on their face. “I apologize — I didn’t intend to be quite so forceful in showing you,” I said.

“The image is worse than the headache, _mon cher_. Please continue.” Easy for him to say. He had started a light massage of my hand, and it felt far better than it should have. I tried to pull it away, but as before in my alley, he wouldn’t permit it.

“As long as there have been vampires, there has been the Vampire Slayer, one girl in all the world gifted with the strength and speed necessary to fight the vampires and the forces of darkness,” I said, wincing slightly as I heard myself. Really, the Council couldn’t have been more florid when they were writing that little speech. It was a wonder more girls hadn’t reacted the way Buffy had, both to Merrick and to me.

Anita’s mouth dropped open slightly, but it was Jean-Claude who said in disbelief, “One? Just one? Just a girl?”

Alright, the rationale behind that particular decision had always been a bit sketchy, but, “Don’t look at me that way. I wasn’t the one who made the rules.”

She managed to close her mouth, just to open it again to ask, “Just who _did_ make the rules?”

“As far as anyone can tell, the Powers That Be set up the system that’s in place. They’re the ones who determine which girl will be chosen next when the Slayer dies,” I said, knowing full well how absurd it sounded.

“Not God?”

“Yaweh was not the dominant god in our world, though he certainly aided in the fight against evil,” I said, answering as carefully as I could, uncertain of how protective she was of her faith in the Christian sect. “The blood sacrifice of his only living son created an invaluable tool for Slayers.”

Anita paused at that and then, sounding very much like a police officer, asked, “Just who were you, then? How do you know all this? Is it common knowledge where you’re from?”

Such simple questions with such complex answers. I’d been both part of the system and outside the system at one time or another in my career as a Watcher, but how to explain my tangled loyalties? How to explain the reality of my world?

Worse, my mouth was dry again. I swallowed a few times before Jean-Claude said, “I think one of the first lessons I will teach you is to ask for something when you need it.” For some reason, his words brought leather restraints to mind. I forced that image out of my thoughts as he said, “Anita, please bring a bottle of water to Rupert.” I didn’t have to look at her to recognize her irritation at being turned into a waitress, but it was directed at him, not me, so I paid little attention to it. I thanked her when she handed the water to me, and she paused long enough to give me a small, tight smile before going back to her chair.

My mouth moist again, I said quietly, “I was a Watcher, and no, the existence of the Slayer was not well known. Nor was the existence of vampires and other demons.”

“What does a Watcher do, _mon cher_?” He was still playing with my right hand, and it was affecting me far more than I wanted it to. I made another futile effort to pull it away, then gave up and tried to focus on my narrative.

“The Watchers’ Council was founded some six thousand years ago as a way to keep track of the Slayer at any given point in time. Initially, all that was required was a record of the Slayer’s kill count. Later, an effort was made to determine which girls might or might not become the Slayer. Ultimately, it evolved into an organization sworn to defend the world against evil. The most expedient way to do that was to locate potential Slayers when they were young and begin training them to fight. Most were removed from their homes long before they had a chance to form memories of their family,” I said. It wasn’t a strictly accurate nor complete description. Over the last two centuries, the Council had become increasingly arrogant in its assumptions about just who was more important than whom. Quentin Travers had expressed that attitude perfectly when he said Slayers die, but the Council remains. Bloody prat. In any event, a more detailed explanation could wait.

Jean-Claude said, “Is Dawn the Slayer?”

I don’t know why the question surprised me — I should have realized they would draw the wrong conclusion. “Dawn? No. Not Dawn.”

“Lassie,” Anita said, her voice flat.

“Buffy. Her name is Buffy,” I snapped. “By the time Dawn and I fell into your world, she had thwarted no less than six attempts to bring about the end of our world. Please grant her the respect she’s due.”

“It didn’t bother you before,” she said, pushing at the issue.

I glared at her and said, “Oh, believe me, it bothered me. But at the time, I was still under the illusion that I had control over my life and could continue to keep my history a secret. Insisting on respect for Buffy without explaining why would have been sheer idiocy on my part.”

We continued glaring at one another for a long moment before she finally said, “How old was she when she was taken from her family and told she had to give up any chance for a normal life?” Anita didn’t sound quite as bitter as Buffy had at the age of sixteen, but she certainly came close. It just reinforced my opinion that the two of them could probably be friends — if they could ever get past their mutual dislike.

“Buffy wasn’t taken from her family. She wasn’t identified until after she was called to be the Slayer,” I said, remembering the first day we met. What a fool I’d made of myself in my eagerness to prove that I was everything she needed.

“How did she take the news, _mon cher_?” Jean-Claude’s question broke through my thoughts and brought me back to the room.

“Merrick wrote that she thought he was insane,” I said, thinking back to the first journal entry he wrote after finding Buffy. “It took a certain amount of cajoling on his part, but he was able to convince her at last to meet him in a local cemetery. It was there that she staked her first vampire.”

“And Merrick was —” I blinked a bit as Jean-Claude’s question interrupted my memories of his journal entries. Merrick’s writing style was florid and self-serving at times, but several weeks with Buffy had changed him far more than he changed her. I used to amuse and comfort myself by following the steady progression in his diaries from self-satisfied Watcher to profoundly confused man. It had made me feel better to know I wasn’t the only one to suffer that particular fate at her hands.

“Merrick Jamison-Smythe was Buffy’s first Watcher. He was the one who managed at last to locate her and inform her of her destiny,” I said. My memories of his journal kept tugging at me, but there was more to be said. “A master vampire killed him with his own stake in front of Buffy. She was only fifteen years old at the time.”

Anita and Jean-Claude both looked appropriately horror-struck, and well they should. Buffy spoke of Merrick only rarely and never in front of her friends, to the best of my knowledge. His death weighed heavily on her conscience, though based on what she told me, there was little she could have done at the time to prevent Lothos from killing him. After we found out the truth about Faith’s Watcher, it had taken quite a bit of nagging on my part before I was able to get Buffy to discuss the loss of Merrick with her. I’d hoped that they would find comfort in each other, and for a brief while, they became close in their shared grief. It was unfortunate that later events destroyed that tenuous bond.

“She must have had nightmares for months,” Anita said quietly.

“Years, actually.”

Jean-Claude said, “It is good that you were there to comfort her.”

“I wasn’t, though, not immediately,” I said, my voice betraying an old anger. “The Council didn’t know for almost two weeks that Merrick had been killed, and then it was another two months before they decided on who Buffy’s new Watcher would be. I didn’t meet her until Merrick was four months in the ground.”

“Her family —”

I stopped Anita with a look before saying, “She was alone with that knowledge and grief for four months. She couldn’t even discuss the matter with her parents, because they didn’t know she was the Slayer.”

Jean-Claude continued his gentle manipulation of my fingers as he said, “She must have been quite an angry young woman when you finally met her.”

“She wasn’t happy. It didn’t help that she and her mother and sister had just left everything familiar to move to a new town,” I answered, trying to ignore my reaction to Jean-Claude’s endless fascination with my hand. I cleared my throat and stammered a bit more than usual when I added, “She was also suffering the stress of her parents’ divorce.”

I looked away from Jean-Claude to Anita, hoping to clear my thoughts for at least a moment, and I caught a look of violent jealousy before she forced a blank expression on her face. I took a deep breath and prepared to go on with the story, though now I watched Anita as I spoke. I hoped it would be easier to ignore Jean-Claude that way. And that it would give me sufficient warning to get away, should she decide to attack.

As it turned out, she did attack, but with words, not bullets. “Not to complain or anything, but I thought the point of this discussion was Angelus, not Buffy,” she said. Her tone seemed to be neutral, but I’d caught a glimpse of her true emotional state, so I knew that she was far from dispassionate. Jean-Claude had to know what she was feeling, so why he continued to play with my hand in front of her was incomprehensible.

“To understand why Angelus tortured me, you first need to understand Buffy. And Angel,” I said, my voice breaking on Angel’s name. It was for her sake that I had made an effort to separate the two identities.

Jean-Claude asked, “Who is Angel?”

“He’s Angelus with a human soul,” I said softly, remembering when he surprised me in the library one evening. He’d been so quiet, with such a clear desire to help. We hadn’t become friends, precisely, but we had developed a certain professional rapport. He would occasionally stop in at the high school after Buffy went home from patrol, and he would answer my questions with patience and gentle good humor. His change into Angelus dealt a devastating blow to those memories.

“How is such a thing possible, _mon cher_? You said the vampires of your world do not have a soul.”

“For the first century and a half of his undead existence, Angelus was known as one of the most corrupt and sadistic vampires to walk the face of the planet. He dealt in pain and death, dispensing both with an even hand,” I said, recalling some of the more graphic entries of my predecessors. “Then, toward the end of the nineteenth century, he killed the wrong person — a Romany girl. Her clan didn’t take her death well, and in retaliation, they cursed Angelus with his human soul.”

Anita frowned at that and said, “What good did that do? Other than putting a leash on him?”

“Unremitting guilt led him to a century-long brood,” I answered. “It wasn’t until Angel arrived in Sunnydale that his attitude began to change.”

She raised an eyebrow and said, “Buffy?”

“Buffy. The two of them fell in love. It was all very romantic in a gothic novel sort of way.” I stopped at that point, calling to mind that horrid season of despair and death. Even years later, it affected me, and I did what I could to shake it off. Now was not the time to start in on my own brooding. Presumably, there would be time for that when I returned home again.

“I get the feeling we aren’t talking happily ever after,” she said with a hint of cynicism. I admired her restraint. Had our positions been reversed, I doubted very much that I would have been able to respond that mildly.

“The two became lovers. Afterward, we learned of a loophole in the curse. A moment of perfect happiness would cause Angel to lose his soul again. It —”

“Excuse me, but what? What kind of idiot wrote that curse?” I didn’t glare at her. She was only repeating the same thing we’d all said or thought at one point or another.

“The kind of idiot arrogant enough to assume that they’ve dreamt up the perfect punishment,” I said.

“How was it that Angelus came to torture you?”

Jean-Claude’s soft question startled me. It felt as if I’d been talking to them for ages and that they should know already. I blinked as I tried to refocus on the original topic and said, “He wanted to know how to bring about the end of the world.”


	7. Chapter 7

_Journal of Rupert Giles_

_January 27, 2002_

_The vampires in this world are quite intriguing — from an academic point of view, that is. Though I’m not able to find a great deal of serious literature on the subject, I’ve been able to ascertain that the vampiric culture places a greater emphasis on blood lines and power than do the vampires in our world._

_I can’t think how often Buffy killed fledglings who had no idea who their sire was, or even what dangers there were to the undead. Such abandonment would never happen here, as far as I can tell. Vampires cling to those they sire, adding power to their own. It seems a bit absurd putting this down on paper, but the only way I can think to describe the situation is a pyramid scheme of sorts. Each new fledgling adds strength to the one standing at the pinnacle._

_I haven’t been able to determine how or even if a vampire can break free from his or her sire. It would seem that some issues are too private to share with curious researchers. Still, it would be fascinating to learn._

*****

October 24, 2004

After I dropped my little bombshell, both Anita and Jean-Claude questioned me for several hours. I answered the majority of their questions as best I could, though there were several — most of which were aimed at discovering what types of torture Angelus employed against me — that I refused to answer. It wasn’t until Anita finally told Jean-Claude to stop pressing me on the issue that he moved on. There was something in the way she spoke to him that suggested she’d seen far more in my stubborn silence than I would have preferred.

When the topic of Angelus — and his return as Angel — was beaten near to death, they wanted to know about Sunnydale. And oh, what joy it was to discuss the vagaries of living on a Hellmouth. I was getting close to the point of begging Jean-Claude to kill me, please, when they moved on to a discussion of demons. At least that was a moderately neutral topic, unlike the discussion about Dawn which followed. Anita, as was her wont, led the charge.

“So Dawn really _isn’t_ your daughter after all,” she said, harking back to a closed subject.

“I suggest you not say that within her hearing. She’ll take exception,” I said, recalling a confrontation which occurred shortly after Buffy’s reappearance in our life. Her sister had attempted to discuss Hank with her, but Dawn would have none of it. She regarded the man as having less importance in her life than the garbage hauler and couldn’t see why Buffy didn’t understand that. She went on to say — rather loudly — that I had been more of a father to them in a few short years than Hank had been the entire time they’d lived with him. The conversation went downhill from there and ended with the two of them in tears — though how Buffy managed that particular trick, I’ve yet to discover.

Anita was about to respond, but I didn’t give her the chance. “Her biological father was never much of a factor in her life — nor Buffy’s, for that matter. I became Dawn’s father after we arrived here, and that facet of our relationship will not change, no matter how much you might wish to argue otherwise,” I said, my temper rising slightly.

Again, she opened her mouth to speak, but this time, it was Jean-Claude who interrupted, saying firmly, “It is irrelevant, _ma petite_. One only has to hear him speak of her to know that Rupert is very much Dawn’s father. You, of all people, should know that blood does not always count between a father and daughter.”

If it was painful for _me_ to hear him say that, I could only imagine what Anita was experiencing, and I felt badly for her. Familial bonds could be tricky under the best of circumstances, but they were even more so when a child was tremendously talented in their field of endeavor. I didn’t know when the split between Anita and her father happened, but judging from her reaction to my relationship with Dawn, I thought it might have been when she was relatively young.

I broke off thinking about it when I realized that neither of my companions had spoken out loud for quite some time. From the way they were looking at one another, I surmised they were holding a rather detailed and emotional conversation through their link. I took advantage of Jean-Claude’s inattention to slowly withdraw my hand from his and to consider all that had happened since Dawn and I left to go to the Hunter’s Ball.

There had been so little time to consider my options this evening, and I’d no one to blame but myself. The only positive step I had taken in the last month was to confirm that a claim did indeed exist. Charlotte Jackson and her coven had been kind enough to help me out in that regard. However, once the claim was confirmed, I did nothing. Like a child who hides his head under the sheets so the monsters won’t find him, I ignored the warning I’d been given in the vain expectation that the big, bad vampire wouldn’t find me.

Such utterly shortsighted foolishness at my age was inexcusable and unforgivable. I’d put Dawn at risk with my stubborn denial of reality, and in the end, I was paying for it with my freedom. I don’t know if I could have come up with a different answer than this if I’d actually sat down and thought about it, and I had no intention of torturing myself now with a belated review of the situation. What was done was done, and I would accept the consequences of my own inaction — even if it meant succumbing to an irresistible urge to review every trite cliche I’d ever heard about dealing with adversity.

I had just made lemonade out of life’s lemons and was coming up fast on the glass being half-full when Jean-Claude rather decisively took possession of my hand again. Aside from his apparent determination to irritate Anita as much as inhumanly possible this evening, he seemed also to want to emphasize the fact that I was now a mere possession.

“You could never be a ‘mere’ anything, Rupert,” he said.

“Stop that!” Bloody vampire. Bad enough that he owned me. He didn’t need to pay attention to every stray thought that wandered through my head. Thinking in Sumerian for too long gave me a headache, and I didn’t care to become the sole support of the pain-relief industry.

“So much passion,” he answered in a low voice. “I could feed from you for years and never come close to depleting it.”

“Would someone please explain to me why vampires can’t have a single conversation without bringing blood or sex into the discussion?” I caught him (and me) by surprise when I managed to snatch my hand back before standing up. The way he looked at me made me extremely nervous, and I felt every inch the virginal bride on her wedding night — absurd, given my history with Ethan.

“I spoke of passion, _mon cher_, not sex,” he said, a glimmer of amusement in his eyes. “Though I am more than willing to discuss the subject with you.”

I could feel the blush scorching its way up my neck as I backed away from the two of them as far as I could get. It was a smallish room, unfortunately, and I was, at best, only seven feet or so from Jean-Claude and perhaps four feet from Anita. Lord, but I wanted a glass of single malt just then. As comfort food went, one couldn’t do much better than a tipple of Ardbeg.

“You will find a bottle in the cabinet behind you,” he said, ignoring my expressed desire that he stop reading my surface thoughts. I would pay for it later, but I started thinking in Sumerian at that point. And I ignored the fact that a bottle of Ardbeg was within reach. If I were to survive the remainder of this encounter with my wits intact, I would need to — well — keep my wits intact. Alcohol might relax me just enough to think that perhaps the situation wasn’t quite so bad after all.

I forbore responding with anything other than a glare (directed at his chin), which melted into a minor smirk as I caught a sense of Jean-Claude’s frustration over not being able to comprehend my surface thoughts. I was playing a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with him, and I had no idea how long it would last before he either abandoned the mouse hole or attempted to put a paw in and swat around for me. I was still mildly astonished at the level of tolerance he was showing in the face of my defiance. Had Angelus been in the room, I’d no doubt I would have already been relieved of one or two much beloved body parts.

He sighed and said, “Very well. I will stop eavesdropping on your thoughts.” I wondered if he had a bridge in Brooklyn he wished to sell to me. “Please. Come and sit down again. We have much to discuss before the sun rises.”

I frowned at that, waiting to hear one or the other of them ask for the story of how the portal had opened in the first place and why we had fallen through. Instead, even as I wondered how best to spin that particular tale, I heard, “Please, Rupert. We must talk about your power and how best to utilize it in the coming confrontation.”

My jaw dropped open at that point, but I couldn’t have closed my mouth if Queen Elizabeth had walked in and told me to mind my manners. I was able to say, “Confrontation? What are you talking about?” after my second attempt to speak.

“With Belle Morte, my maker. She is attempting to rouse the Gentle Mother in an effort to take over the Council,” he said.

Anita interrupted at that point and said, “The First Darkness is the mother of all vampires. She’s been asleep for a while, now.” Her tone of voice suggested she was making an understatement of monstrous proportions.

Warming to his subject, he continued, “Belle Morte believes she can be rid of the Mother and take her place as head of the Council. Not all will object to her plans, and quite a few will help her just to have a chance at me.”

“I know why I hate you,” I said, “but why do they?”

Something in his expression told me he would have argued the point of whether or not I hated him, but instead, he chose to answer my question. He said, “Anita and Richard wear my marks, and because of that combination of vampire, sorceress and animal, we are a rarity — a triumvirate of power. As such, Belle Morte and others on the Council fear us.” After a brief pause, he added, “And you have just added your power to ours.” His eyes glittered with excitement — or perhaps it was anticipation. I couldn’t tell whether he was more excited about the coming fight or the addition of power. Anita must have been in a similar quandary, because she gave him a sharp look.

As for me, I tried backing away before I remembered there was a cabinet just behind. My stammer worsened as I fought to ask, “Why on earth would you think I’m insane enough to join in your fight?”

“It is not insanity — it is self-preservation. There are those who will attempt to kill us all, once they learn that your magic has been tied to the triumvirate. There are very few who will step forward to help,” he said matter-of-factly.

“And you didn’t think to mention this _before_ you claimed me?” My voice had gone shrill enough to remind me of Wesley in his first days in Sunnydale.

In a tone dry enough to evaporate the Mississippi River, Anita responded, “What — and ruin his chance to gain more power?” At least I wasn’t alone in thinking this entire scenario was dodgy at best.

Jean-Claude nodded and said, “Precisely.” I didn’t know how he managed to miss hearing her tone of voice, but it was clear that he had. All I could assume was that he was too focused on his newest toy — me.

“Tell me, Jean-Claude,” she said, her voice getting even more dangerous, “if Giles had the magical energy, say, of a crocheted toilet roll cover, would you have even bothered helping him out?”

He frowned at her question and said, “Of course not.”

I didn’t know why she was so appalled — I certainly wasn’t. He had just confirmed my more cynical suppositions, a fact which made me feel better for some odd reason. Perhaps it was because he was finally behaving as I expected him to. Or perhaps it was because he was honest about his motivations. In either event, I felt as if I were on more certain ground at that point.

He continued speaking to her, saying, “You must understand, _ma petite_, that with Rupert’s strength, we will no longer have to fear what Belle or the Council will attempt. As the triumvirate’s human servant, he will —”

He was interrupted by twin shouts from Anita and me as we yelled in an unexpected harmony, “What!?” She and I paused as we looked at each other, and by a twitch of her eyebrow, she indicated that I could go first.

“I said specifically I didn’t wish to become a human servant, and you were just as specific in saying you already had one and couldn’t take another,” I said, my stammer melting in the heat of anger. “Explain yourself, _Monsieur_!”

As usual, my fury had forced my speech patterns into rigid formality. Anita’s anger carried her in the opposite direction. “Yeah, Snuggles,” she began insultingly. “Wouldn’t mind hearing that explanation myself.”

For all that he’d lived for however many decades, Jean-Claude looked like a confused little boy at that moment. It was obvious that he could understand neither our anger at him nor at the situation when he clearly thought tonight’s events were the best possible outcome. I wanted to sigh, but that would mean ending my glare, and I wasn’t prepared to do that just yet. I needed answers first.

He sighed and said, “It should be apparent to the two of you that what happened tonight wasn’t a simple claiming. If it had been, neither Anita nor Richard would have been affected. Instead, his magic mingled freely with the triumvirate’s power, and he tied himself to each of us. Had it just involved me, Rupert, you would not now be a human servant.”

Anita was speechless, but I managed to find my voice long enough to say, “And you know this — how?”

“I have been considering the question of your ties since the claiming. This is the only explanation that makes sense. You do not feel to me as a simple claim should feel, _mon cher_. You should not have been able to follow our link back to me, yet you did. You should not have been able to follow the marks back to Anita and Richard, yet you did. Only a human servant could have done such, and a human servant could only have been added to the triumvirate,” he said with a restrained urgency. Apparently, it had just occurred to him that Anita and I were a tad upset over the issue and that he needed to convince us that my addition to their little group was a good thing.

“If he were a real human servant, you wouldn’t have been able to control him the way you did,” Anita said. I was surprised by that. I hadn’t realized that was one of the benefits of having the position.

“But that was before he tied himself to you and Richard, _ma petite_. I have been attempting to force his compliance, but I have not been able to do so — not since I released him after he joined his magic to Richard’s energy. His ability to defy me makes me believe him to be a human servant,” he said. I’m not sure whose mouth was open wider — mine or Anita’s — but I’m certain we looked a bit silly.


	8. Chapter 8

_Journal of Rupert Giles_

_June 30, 2001_

_Dawn is asleep with her head in my lap, and I’m twisted around to make this journal entry without waking her. God knows, we both need the healing that only sleep can provide, but I can’t rest until I put my thoughts down on paper._

_If I had to rate this day on a scale of bad to worst, I would have to put it several miles beyond worst. I can’t think when I’ve had a more horrendous day, but at the end of it, I believe it’s for the best. That she trusts me enough to use me as a pillow is far more than I could have hoped for even an hour ago. _

_She’s so innocent, and she needs so much from me — from the world. I swear I’ll defend her with my life. I never want to go through this with her again._

*****

October 24, 2004

After Jean-Claude’s revelation, Anita and I spent another few hours interrogating him in the matter of my exact status within his “family”. Though his logic seemed unassailable, I was quite reluctant to accept his theory. For one thing, he made it very apparent that as human servant to the triumvirate, I would be expected to participate more fully in his undead existence than would have been the case had I been a simple possession. The upside to this situation, of course, was that I would retain full control of my faculties. I no longer had to fear Jean-Claude shutting down my mind and using me as a puppet.

Be that as it may, I was troubled when I realized they were both withholding something from me. When I attempted to pin one of them down, the other would break in and redirect the subject. It was done so smoothly that I didn’t notice what was happening until the fourth or fifth time I failed to get an answer. At that point, I gave up. They had no intention of sharing information with me, and I didn’t know enough to know whether or not I should force the issue.

I did, however, know enough to realize that I’d survived the night with my most important secret intact. Jean-Claude was so bedazzled by my power, that he hadn’t thought to ask how or why Dawn and I had ended up in this world. That being the case, I was more than willing to continue distracting him with the potential of my magic.

A discreet glance at my watch told me that sunrise would be in an hour or so, and I indicated my desire to go home. Jean-Claude didn’t want me to leave his side, but a look from Anita stayed his objections. Instead, he told me to go to Circus of the Damned one half hour before sunset. Jason would be my guide to his private quarters. I started to protest, but Anita directed the same look at me. I began to understand why Jean-Claude deferred to her so often, and I agreed to be at Circus at the appointed time.

I was guided back to my car by the same vampire who had shown me to Jean-Claude’s office. I wondered if he’d been outside the door the entire time but not enough to trouble myself to ask. On the way home, I pulled into an all-night service station to fill my car’s tank with petrol and to make one other purchase. The brief detour meant I arrived home about twenty minutes before sunrise.

Of the two women guarding Dawn, Della was awake and sitting near the door, and Mary was sleeping on the couch. I wasn’t thrilled about walking into my home to find a gun pointed at me, but I appreciated the fact that Della was on high alert. When she recognized me, she lowered her gun and gave me a sheepish look. The best I could manage in return was a very brief smile and the whispered comment that I appreciated her vigilance.

“I’m making coffee. Would you like a cup?” When she told me how she took it, I went into the kitchen to make it. Coffee wasn’t normally my drink of choice in the morning, but given the way the night had gone, I wanted its bitter taste as a complement to my mood.

After taking a cup to Della, I took my own cup up to the roof to greet the sun. And to smoke one of the cigarettes I’d bought that morning. Dawn would be able to tell in a moment that I’d taken it up again, but at least she wouldn’t have to deal with the smell in our home. Restricting my newly-reacquired habit to outdoor spaces would, I hoped, discourage me from smoking to an excessive degree.

I sat at the table and unknotted my bow tie at long last. I’d wanted to open my collar for the last five hours, but I didn’t want anyone to think I was getting comfortable in Jean-Claude’s presence. I was facing eastward, and though I couldn’t see the sun crest the horizon because of the surrounding buildings, I surmised it had done so when I felt Jean-Claude’s presence slip from my mind. It was a relief to know he wouldn’t always be in residence.

I tamped down the box in order to pack the tobacco more tightly — an old habit learned from Deirdre. I had removed the cellophane and torn off the foil when I heard from behind, “Did someone slip you some band candy last night?”

It was Buffy — with a rather odd question. “What does band candy have to do with anything?”

“The last time I saw you with cigarettes, you were taking a trip down memory lane’s wild side, courtesy of Ethan Rayne,” she said, having moved in front of me. She’d made herself visible, and, if I wasn’t mistaken, she was near enough to me to become at least somewhat solid.

I nodded at her words, remembering, then said, “Actually, I started smoking again shortly after we arrived here.”

She raised her eyebrows at that and said, “Oh? Then why am I only just now seeing you with a pack in your hands?”

“Dawn took exception to my decision to start. My little rebellion against common sense lasted all of five days before she wore me down and I quit again,” I answered, smiling a little at the memory. She had not been in the slightest bit understanding about my need to relieve stress with nicotine. I doubted she would be any more so now.

“Well, apparently you’re also doing drugs if you think either one of us is going to sit back quietly and watch you kill yourself,” she said, taking a swipe at the pack. She wasn’t quite strong enough or solid enough to snatch it from me, so I calmly pulled out a cigarette and watched her fume as I lit up.

Nonsmokers will never understand just how comforting that first acrid bite of smoke can be when it hits the lungs. I drew it in slowly, not wanting to choke, and held the smoke in for a long moment before exhaling — away from Buffy — and taking another drag. I doubted I would be able to have more than the one cigarette, so I planned to enjoy as much of it as possible before Buffy regained sufficient solidity to make smoking impossible. I ignored a small voice that reminded me I would be fifty years old the next month, so perhaps I should stop behaving like a teenager with an imaginary point to prove.

She glared at me before sitting on the table and saying in a conversational tone, “Did you know that ghosts gossip more than any other thing on this planet?”

I was too lost in the pleasure of the cigarette to pay any attention at first. When her words finally sank in, I frowned before asking, “What’s that to do with anything?”

“Glad you asked,” she said with a sunshine-up-your-arse grin. Lord, I hated that smile. It usually preceded a migraine-inducing statement. “The biggest news last night was that the master of the city managed to snag himself one hell of a powerful sorcerer.”

Damn. I took a long, slow, deep drag of my cigarette and felt the chemicals hit my blood like a minor explosion. I enjoyed the minor high whilst I could.

“So imagine my surprise when I found out who Jean-Claude’s newest acquisition was,” she continued in the same gossipy tone of voice. She waited for me to say something, but I didn’t feel like talking at the moment. Instead, I watched the smoke curl up from the lit end of the cigarette and form random patterns in the slight morning breeze.

I held out longer than she did, though I took no joy in winning that particular round. “Why did you do something so incredibly stupid? What’s Dawn going to say when she finds out?”

I ignored her first question and answered the second by saying, “Most likely, she’ll say, ‘Good,’ and then she’ll challenge me to a round of Grand Theft Auto — which she’ll lose, by the way. She just doesn’t have the right instincts to run over pedestrians milling around an intersection. Pity.”

“Grand Theft Auto? You two play video games together?” Her voice was rising with each question, and the last was quite shrill. “How come you never played video games with me?”

“Aside from the fact that neither you nor I owned a gaming machine?” I was quite willing to nurture her pique over the situation, as long as it kept her from the dangerous topic of Jean-Claude. I admit I was surprised at how easily I’d sent her scampering down another path, but thought perhaps now that she was a ghost, her ability to focus was no longer quite as strong as it once was.

“Fine. Bring logic into the discussion. And while you’re at it, bring in an explanation for last night’s stupidity,” she said with a rather significant pout.

I sighed, wishing I could have diverted her. I wasn’t entirely certain I wanted to talk to anyone about it, let alone my dead Slayer. Too, I wasn’t comforted by the knowledge that dead men and women _do_ tell tales.

Her expression acquired a seriousness I hadn’t seen for some time, and she said in a quieter tone, “Come on, Giles. Spill. How could you and Dawn possibly think this was a good thing?”

“I don’t believe this is a good thing, actually,” I said, finding my voice at last. “But I prefer that Dawn continue to believe that my — association — with Jean-Claude is a cause for relief, not anxiety.”

“In other words, don’t upset her. I get it,” she said impatiently.

“That’s it precisely,” I said, suddenly realizing I had another opportunity to derail her train of thought. “For instance, at the moment, she’s under the impression that you’ve become a spectral _voyeuse_ —”

She interrupted with, “A spectral whozzits?”

“In Dawn’s words, a ‘peeping Buffy’. You wouldn’t happen to know how she came to believe that, would you?”

She put on an air of completely insincere innocence and said, “I have no idea how Dawn’s brain works. You know her better than I do these days — why not ask her?”

“I don’t have to ask. She said you told her which locations you were planning to haunt,” I said, taking another long drag and expelling it out of the corner of my mouth. Odd, how the old habits persist. Technically, Buffy was a coherent paranormal illusion of sorts, but I still refused to blow smoke in her direction.

“Alright — I _may_ have suggested that looking at naked athletes wouldn’t fall into the realm of the bad, but that doesn’t mean you’re getting out of answering my question,” she said, waiting expectantly.

I had one last card up my sleeve, and I played it for all it was worth. “Might you also have implied that you were watching me as I shower?” I glared at her over the top of my glasses, and my heart very nearly stopped when I saw her chin drop to her chest and a look of guilt cross her face. Bloody hell. I leaned forward as I cried out, “Buffy!”

She looked up with a sudden grin and said, “Gotcha! Now. Enough with the stall tactics. Start talking.” Ghost or not, I very nearly tried to wrap my hands around her throat so I could throttle her.

“Have you considered that I might not wish to discuss this with you?” It was a last ditch effort to appeal to her sense of avoidance. I should have known it was doomed.

“Believe me, I get that you don’t want to talk to me about it, but that doesn’t get you off the hook. This was a bad move, no matter what the reason —”

“Angelus,” I said softly, breaking into her incipient rant.

I stubbed out my first cigarette in a saucer I’d brought up as a makeshift ashtray. I briefly considered waiting for the second, but it was no contest. This particular addiction fit like a pair of well-worn slippers, and I lit up without another thought as I waited for her to consider the implications of what I’d just said.

After several minutes, she hesitantly said, “You never did tell me what he did to you.”

“And I have no intention of doing so now. Suffice it to say that certain of his actions that night left me vulnerable,” I said slowly, to prevent my stammer from worsening.

“If Dawn knew how bad this is for you —”

“She’s aware that Angelus tortured me,” I broke in. “But you are not to try to make her feel guilty for supporting a course of action that ensures her safety.”

She looked as though she were about to argue the point, but I continued, “What’s done is done, Buffy. This particular decision is irreversible, and I don’t see any need to flog it to a bloody pulp. The important thing is that Dawn is safe.”

“She wouldn’t want you to pay this price for her safety,” she said. So much for thinking she might start listening to me at this late date.

“She might not, but I would. You don’t understand how important it is to me to ensure that she leads a happy, normal life,” I said, taking a drag from my half-forgotten cigarette before stubbing it out. “Granted, at least some of my obsession is overcompensation brought on by arguing for her death —”

Buffy broke in with, “But she doesn’t know about that!”

“She’s not stupid — she confronted me not long after we found ourselves here. She asked if we had considered killing her before Glory was able to open the portal,” I said. Buffy looked horrified, and I hastened to reassure her, “We worked through it and made our peace with one another. Granted, it wasn’t the most pleasant conversation either of us has ever had, but it cleared the air and allowed us to move forward.”

Buffy, who still looked shocked, said, “I can’t believe you told her.”

“Her question was unexpected,” I acknowledged. “I hadn’t planned on discussing it with her at all, but you must believe me when I tell you that in hindsight, talking about the situation with Glory was the best thing we could have done.”

“So you’ll tell her about wanting her dead, but not about what you did to keep her alive,” Buffy answered. She was worse than a terrier at a rat hole.

“It’s irrelevant.” I was reluctant to admit to blame in the matter, but I wanted her to understand how this came to be. I said, “I was warned that there was a problem, but rather than dealing with it, I chose to ignore it. What happened last night is as much my fault as Angelus’. Jean-Claude chose to take the opportunity that was presented to him by my inaction.”

“You could kill him — your magic is strong enough,” she said, grasping for a different solution.

“To what end? Even were I to survive killing him — and I’m not entirely certain I would at this point — I would be just as vulnerable to the next vampire who came along. And that’s assuming I’m not automatically marked for death.” I could see how frustrated she was, but she needed to take a pragmatic look at the situation. I reminded her, “The first rule is ‘don’t die.’ Would you have me give up my life and Dawn’s?”

We sat looking at each other for quite a long time before she finally asked, “How are you gonna be able to live with your decision?”

“The same way I live with all my decisions — one moment at a time. Come, now, Buffy, it isn’t all that bad,” I said, as much to convince her as to convince myself. “I have a great deal of autonomy, and it isn’t as if I’ll become Jean-Claude’s puppet. I won’t be expected to live in his pocket, so I’ll have a life quite separate from my obligations to him.”

“I’ve heard stories about him,” she said, stammering slightly. “He — what if he wants — other stuff from you?”

I knew what she was trying to ask, but I had no intention of answering that question — not if she couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud. I played dumb and said, “What are you talking about?”

“I —” Her mouth worked a few times as she attempted to form the words, but in the end, she said, “Nothing. Never mind.” I was pleased that at least some things hadn’t changed; Buffy was still incapable of thinking about me and sex in the same context.

I was starting to relax at long last when another thought drifted up into my consciousness. I said, “Buffy, have you yet considered attempting a deliberate haunting with all the trappings?”

“Huh?”

“There’s a certain youth minister who desperately needs to examine his conscience. Interested?”

~ fin ~


End file.
